Ryan Seacrest Makes $15 Million A Year

Well, a thread on a Progressive Music site with Ryan Seacrest in the title has reached 7 pages.

If I had that kind of money I would buy a chunk of land and would clear a grass airstrip with a hangar and then buy one of these and fly it for the rest of my life.

Originally posted by Epignosis Originally posted by JJLehto I still believe Ryan Seacrast should pay more in taxes than my father. Instead of trying to jack him up to maybe 50%  we should lower our taxes... How about just getting rid of income tax?  It's only 99 years old.  Whatever did we do before then?  Income taxation is counterproductive (especially since the US government wastes our money, and whether you call yourself a conservative or liberal, the government wastes hundreds of billions of dollars on stuff you don't think they should).

Well in the short run I don't see it as realistic, but eventually (once the federal government was widdled down enough) I'd be fine with removing the Federal income tax.

I've also opened up to a flat tax, which you know I thought was evil incarnate. We can't live in perfection world so I see a flat tax of like 10% as not that bad. By that point it'd be paying for things like the military, courts, the "basics" so it wouldn't be wasteful then.
Also it'd be truly fair because those cursed wealthy that "don't pay their fair share" are already paying for things that will never benefit them, or with SS they get poor to negative rates of return.

Which is totally "fair" isn't it? If you pay more you should receive more, after all are these taxes (to pay for essential benefits) or just punishments?

Besides Rob, baby steps...not too long ago I was OK with tax wedges of 60% and all that jazz. You gotta admit I've come a way



Edited by JJLehto - May 03 2012 at 12:55

Yes, I did know that. It's technically $110,100 btw :P

Zero is deducted after that is incorrect...they still pay, just not the 6.2% of FICA that goes to SS.
If you earn $110,100 you pay 6.2% into SS or $6,826.20
Then it's capped there.
So at $250K you pay that $6,826.20 (2.73%)
So at $1 mill you pay that $6,826.20 (.68%)

It is regressive but saying they dont pay above that is a lie or a misunderstanding.

Here are my issues with removing the FICA cap:
Liberals always talk about those super wealthy...well removing the cap would hit the upper middle class as well.
$110K to $250K let's say. Seems a bit unfair to me, those are not elitists...and pay a lot of tax already.

The ONLY way I could ever support doing that is if we lowered the income taxes to balance things out, otherwise you're crushing the middle class.

Here's the thing SS benefits are skewed to benefit the lesser off, which is understandable, but higher earners already get a poor rate of return, and it even gets negative at one point. So raising taxes more just makes it worse.
Besides, the program is horribly inefficient...it yields poor returns for what we pay, and it's gunna get worse with time. If you want to call yourself "fair" then you have to realize SS is not.
This could be fixed but neither solution to doing so is gunna be popular.


btw I've been researching a lot of topics lately, SS is fresh in my mind so you couldn't have picked a better one





Edited by JJLehto - May 03 2012 at 14:03