by Marc Joffe, Cato at LibertyJuly 16, 2024.
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To determine whether the state is still subsidizing California drivers today, Krit Chanwong and I reviewed various local, state, and federal disclosures for the 2022–2023 fiscal year. We used actual values when available but were sometimes obliged to use budget values due to a lack of realistic materials with sufficient detail.
by Eric Boehm, The reasonJuly 16, 2024.
The reality, however, looks different. The contract signed by the Teamsters and UPS only requires air conditioning in vans and trucks purchased through 2024 and beyond. In June, CNN reported that UPS had not yet purchased new air-conditioned trucks.
As a result, the Teamsters who work for UPS are still on the job this summer—while their boss turned a victory lap into a plum speaking gig at the RNC.
A supporter of O’Brien’s might argue that progress in uptime is always up and that air conditioning only on newly purchased trucks is better than no air conditioning at all. It’s understandable.
But if unions were essential to extracting those concessions from employers, why do Amazon’s non-union delivery drivers work in fully air-conditioned trucks?
by Romina Boccia, Cato at LibertyJuly 18, 2024.
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If the Social Security system continues to operate as it currently does, the average US worker earning about $60,000 a year could soon face an additional burden of over $3,000 in payroll taxes, bringing their payroll tax burden to over $10,000 a year.
Figure 1 shows how much taxes will increase for the average US worker if Congress raises the payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 17.5 percent, which is needed to maintain the current Social Security benefit structure until 2097. With this higher rate of tax payable, the annual payment. the tax burden on middle-income earners would increase by more than 40 percent, rising from $7,449 to $10,512.
by Robert Posen and Charles Blahous, MarketWatchJuly 16, 2o24.
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The vital rate of Social Security recipients is increased even more directly by immigration than by increased fertility. This is because immigrants are more likely to arrive as working-age, tax-paying adults, while it usually takes nearly two decades before native-born Americans make any tax contributions. The Social Security trustees’ 2024 report contains a sensitive analysis showing that if immigration were 35% higher than currently expected, the Social Security deficit would be reduced by 11%. Immigration can’t eliminate the Social Security deficit, but it helps.
Also:
As a 2013 actuarial note from the Social Security Office of the Chief Actuary explains, these contributions only result in individual benefits if they later obtain authorization for legal work and residency (or leave the US altogether), and if they have contributed long enough. for profit. Most people who enter the country illegally fail to obtain this status, and moreover, the paper says, “evidence suggests that only a small fraction of those who could potentially receive benefits do so.”
As a result, almost all immigrants pay Social Security taxes without claiming benefits. In fact, those immigrants fund Social Security for all of us. These grants are important. For example, in 2010, Social Security began running a deficit that has continued ever since. If it weren’t for the collection of payroll taxes on the earnings of unauthorized immigrants, Social Security would have run a deficit a year ago, in 2009.
The latter is especially important to people (and there are many of them) who think that immigrants are harming Social Security.
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