Well, he's making 20k a year, which is barely enough to live on in most American cities. Not sure what you expect of him.

Obama is not going to win Virginia or Colorado. If he wins at all it will be 280, 285 EC votes, tops.

Likely even self-employed people are assessed for those "taxes" at year-end. They aren't reallt taxes, though, as the idea is that everyone gets a beenfit, right?

I can't speak perfectly educated on this issue but I am very familiar with income tax systems both personal and corporate as well as "payroll taxes" in my home country. And I am not sure the people discussing these things udnerstand them perfectly well here.

Oh, and I saw nothing in that article or the study that reflected the subscription medium, like I prefer. So that was completely discounted.

Oh, and FICA isn't a tax. It looks like a tax, but as Lando points out, it is a payment into a system that goes towards your future benfits. The fact that the federal government has repeatedly abused it and that system is now in financial trouble falls on the feds. If it had been strictly used all along to pay for retiree benefits as a separate system, it wouldn't be in the situation it is. But the federal government "borrowed" money they shouldn't have and now the system is going to go under.

Lando, I'm not sure what you mean by "everyone gets a benefit". Everyone also benefits from taxes spent on national defence, because everyone gets the same amount of military defending them. Does that mean that taxes that pay for national defence are also not a real tax? I would think that what makes something a tax is that the government collects money from you for engaging in some activity, not what they spend it on.

The segregation of FICA taxes and federal income taxes is basically an accounting fiction. Social Security and Medicare payments are mandatory spending and would come from general revenues if their trust funds did not exist -- and FICA taxes could easily just be income taxes as well. Notably, when FICA taxes were temporarily reduced in 2010 and 2011, the revenue shortfall in Social Security and Medicare was made up simply by diverting revenue from the general fund. It's all money collected by the federal government one way or another, and one way or another, about half of it has to go to Social Security and Medicare by law.

Sbyvl36: There is zero chance that any of: Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, or Michigan will go to Romney unless Obama starts sacrificing kittens on primetime TV.

Draugnar, every tax is a payment that goes into your benefit, one way or another, directly or indirectly. Nevertheless, all dollars collected by the federal government are essentially the same.

Draugnar explained it correctly. In paying into Social Security (if I udnerstand your nomenclatures correctly) the idea is that if you lose your job then you are entitled to Social Security Benefits (monthly, or whatever). Equally, paying into the Government Pension Plan you are being forced to put money away for your future. These are not taxes in the way that the government has the ability to allocate it to their programs, they are (or are supposed to be) constrained by fund accounting where this money is pooled for a specific sue. Does that make more sense?

I agree with you and Draugnar both that these systems are not used exactly correctly, but you should udnerstand the idealogy before critiscising. Currently in Canada, I pay into a Canada Pension Fund, but our government has screwed it up enough that there is about 0.0001% chance there will be any money left by the time I am entitled to it.

@Lando:
No, that isn't how it works. Social Security is a retirement fund. There is unemployment insurance as well...the statement about "skin in the game" was about the US system, so this was kind of specific to the US system.

Canada's CPP is actually solvent until 2075. It's just a little stingy in the benefits it pays out. They pre-funded it in the 90s, and the CPP Investment Board currently has a massive sovereign fund of over $120 billion which is making very large returns on its investments as well. The CPP is essentially the only national pension fund in a developed country that is solvent long-term.

Lando, my point is that the law does not say payroll taxes fund Social Security benefits, and benefits don't get paid if they're aren't enough payroll taxes. It says payroll taxes are collected, and Social Security benefits are paid. There is no connection in the law to how many taxes are collected and what benefits are paid. It is just like any tax that is collected to pay for a government-funded service. I would make the argument that any country with a similar set-up mostly relies on this accounting fiction that payroll taxes are for national pension plans to generate political support for the program.

Michigan is actually rated a toss-up. The economy there has been very bad, and a great many union workers have moved out of the state, which may mean fewer reliable Democrat voters. Romney also has roots there.

I agree that Connecticut, NJ, Oregon, etc. are probably wishful thinking.

Everyone remember...
Don't let the Reds (Communists) take over!

@Atack - It wasn't passed as a tax. It isn't repealable the same as a tax. And it's original intent and regulations prevented it from going to the general fund like a tax would. It isn't a tax.

@Stack not @Atack. Typo.

It's not a federal income tax, no - it's circular to say that it doesn't fit the definition of a federal income tax so it's not a tax, when I'm arguing that it is functionally the same despite those technical differences.

The money collected through FICA taxes are functionally used today - not tomorrow, not a decade from now - to pay the benefits of current retirees. It doesn't matter that there is a trust fund, because the spending is mandatory and the federal government's revenue HAS to be put towards it. This is roughly half of what your government does today. My only point is that if people are contributing to what half of the federal government is spending its money on, it is completely unfair to say they don't have skin in the game.

Your assessment of half is off by, oh, about 30%. a little over 20% of what the federal government spends is on social security. So epic fucking fail.

I was referring to Social Security AND Medicare, which were at 40% the last time I looked and only increasing as the population ages. FICA taxes pay for both.

Michigan was considered about 96 or 97% likely to swing Obama on 538 last time I checked. Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, maybe even Wisconsin in play. Michigan? No way. Obama destroyed McCain there in 2008 and with the successful revival of the auto industry there, he will easily take it again.

Yuo don't think Wisconsim will just jump on the Republican band wagon considering the Paul Ryan is from there?

Nate Silver is very slow to adjust his models. I think he has a strong pro-Obama bias built in--he does work for the New York Times, after all.

Nate Silver is a liberal hack.

Monte Carlo simulations apparently now have a liberal bias?

That's hardly fair, EightfoldWay. While I don't particularly buy the Nate-Silver-is-biased argument, it's also not a silly suggestion. As he himself makes clear all the time, there are TONS of human-created assumptions that go into his model. It would be easy peasy to make them in such a way that the model listed severely in either direction, Monte Carlo simulation though it be.

In fact, all he'd have to do (for example) is overstate the incumbent bias, or mis-estimate the effect of a bad economy. There are academic studies (notably the U of CO one) that suggest he has done just that. That's not to say they're right and he's wrong -- he's done his own studying, obviously -- but it's just a couple examples of how easy it would be for his simulation to have a bias.

I think those possibly biased simulations predicted 49/50 states correctly and every single governor correctly in 2008 IIRC.

Senator, erist, not governor, but that's correct -- he had a superb record in 2008. This is part of why I think one must pay attention to him.

Of course, that doesn't actually prove he's not biased, for two reasons. (a) He could always have changed due to bias, conscious or otherwise (he's tweaked very substantially with his model since '08); and (b) his model gives higher weight to things like the economy, past electoral patterns, etc. the farther out from the election we are, and converges, as we get close to the election, to looking mostly at the polls. So he could be completely wrong about how to factor in the economy, and then the numbers could all change in the last week or two based on that dropping out of his model, and if the model accounts for polls _correctly_, then he would get to say he had called everything right (yet his predictions this far out might be worthless).

I don't especially think that's the case though. But they're points to keep in mind when evaluating Silver's model. (It's to his credit that he's as transparent as he is about how it works, so that people like me can raise these points).

Sure, but it's not like it's exactly close. Arguably one of the best models we have available to us, that uses all available polling, and it's not even close in most of the midwestern swing states. Not like, 60% that may actually be 52%, but like 95% that probably is NOT 50%

It's close in enough states to swing the election though, erist. For example, Ohio could be 55 instead of 70, which would make the election much closer to 55 than 70.

only if you assume that the entire model is tilted towards Obama (which you may, say not factoring in the economy enough, or having too strong of an incumbent bias) otherwise it is just as likely it is the other direction (95 instead of 70). I just don't see a path to victory for Romney at all unless something major happens between now and the election. I actually think a strong moderate candidate (as both Romney and McCain were BEFORE they ran for President) would have cleaned up this election - or at least one that is libertarian-lite on social issues. Much hooey is made about the ultra-conservative base, but those people live in the South mostly, and would vote for whatever Republican. A Republican candidate that was pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and spoke openly about wanting to balance the budget by returning to Reagan-era tax rates would have won this election for sure.