Is Driving in California Subsidized?

by Marc Joffe, Cato at Liberty, July 16, 2024.

Excerpt:

To determine whether the government is still subsidizing California drivers today, Krit Chanwong and I reviewed a variety of local, state, and federal disclosures for the 2022–2023 fiscal year. We used actual figures when available but were sometimes obliged to use budgeted amounts due to lack of sufficiently detailed actuals.

Teamsters Boss Sean O’Brien Put Political Spectacle Ahead of His Job

by Eric Boehm, Reason, July 16, 2024.

The reality, however, looks a bit different. The contract that the Teamsters and UPS signed only requires air conditioning in vans and trucks purchased in 2024 and beyond. In June, CNN reported that UPS has not yet purchased any new trucks that include air conditioning.

As a result, Teamsters members working for UPS are still sweltering 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 the labor moment is always incremental and that air conditioning only in newly purchased trucks is better than no air conditioning at all. Fair enough.

But if unions were essential to extracting those concessions from employers, why are Amazon’s non-union delivery drivers working in fully air-conditioned trucks?

US Workers Earning $60,070 Face $3,063 in Higher Taxes to Keep Social Security Solvent

by Romina Boccia, Cato at Liberty, July 18, 2024.

Excerpt:

If the Social Security program continues to operate as it currently does, a median US worker earning around $60,000 annually could soon face an additional burden of more than $3,000 in payroll taxes, bringing their total payroll tax burden to more than $10,000 a year.

Figure 1 shows how much taxes would increase for a median US worker should Congress increase the payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 17.5 percent, which is necessary to maintain Social Security’s current benefit structure through 2097. With this higher payroll tax rate, the yearly payroll tax burden for median earners would rise by more than 40 percent, increasing from $7,449 to $10,512.

Social Security depends on immigrants — especially those in the U.S. unlawfully

by Robert Posen and Charles Blahous, MarketWatch, July 16, 2o24.

Excerpt:

Social Security’s critical worker-collector ratio is boosted even more directly by immigration than by increased fertility. This is because immigrants are most likely to arrive as working-age, taxpaying adults, whereas it usually takes almost two decades before native-born Americans make appreciable payroll-tax contributions. The 2024 Social Security trustees’ reportcontains a sensitivity analysis showing that if future immigration were 35% higher than is now projected, Social Security’s financing shortfall would be reduced by 11%. Immigration can’t eliminate Social Security’s financing shortfall, but it helps.

And:

As a 2013 actuarial note from the Social Security Office of the Chief Actuary explains, these contributions only result in benefits for the individual if they subsequently achieve legal work authorization and resident status (or leave the U.S. entirely), and if they have contributed long enough to accrue a benefit. The vast majority of people who enter the country unlawfully fail to ever attain this status, and what’s more, the note says, “the evidence indicates that a relatively small portion of those who potentially could draw benefits do so.”

As a result, nearly all such immigrants pay Social Security payroll taxes without ever claiming benefits. In effect, those immigrants subsidize Social Security for the rest of us. These subsidies are significant. For example, in 2010, Social Security began running cash deficits that have continued ever since. Were it not for payroll-tax collections on immigrants’ unauthorized earnings, Social Security would have begun running deficits a year earlier, in 2009.

This last is especially important for people (and there are many of them) who think that immigrants are hurting Social Security.

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