Ayn Rand Institute applies for and receives government bailout.

Ayn Rand was a fucking hack, whose body of work largely appeals to kids and teenagers.

Anyone with a sense of reality or life experience quickly realizes how full of shit she is/was.

Well, first of all, unemployment insurance premiums -- which technically are paid on your behalf by your employer, not by you -- aren't all that much. In most states they're between 1% and 2% of taxable wages and less than 1% of total wages.

The idea that you'll never receive Social Security will only come true if the people you vote for get their way, so frankly that's a self-inflicted injury.

But those are just a portion of the total picture. Remember back during Occupy Wall Street, when the Tea Party folks were licking the boots of the 1%, indignantly proclaiming about how the top 10% pay 70% of the taxes, and the top 50% pay 97% of the taxes? Well, there are some things they ignored, but in broad strokes, they weren't wrong.

Based on things you've said here, it doesn't sound like you've had a lot of lucrative jobs. That's fine, by the way -- I haven't either. I'll probably never be better off than "moderately secure middle class." My intent here is not to shame -- it's just to point out that, given what we know about who pays the taxes that fund our shared resources, it is not very likely that your taxes are subsidizing other people ... and it's much more likely that other people's taxes are subsidizing you.

"My taxes pay the freight for other people" is one of our country's most prevalent, cherished beliefs. But for most of the people who hold it, it isn't actually true.

Social security insolvency has little to nothing to do with Republicans slashing the funding (that I don’t vote for) and more to do with the government increasing the debt.

https://www.crfb.org/papers/analysi...imZAJJn9wvXnmPnlInUGdpHe6EMeZ3cEaAvJWEALw_wcB
With congress in continuous gridlock, what do you think will happen to SS in the next twenty years? I doubt very little will be done even if older Americans tend to vote more than any other demographic. By that t time I’ll be pretty close to retirement age. I’m not holding my breath.

The number often touted is intentionally misleading and is designed to only focus people on the federal income tax. When you factor in state, local, and non-income taxes like sales and property taxes, the numbers change quite a bit.

The top 20% pay 66.5% of the overall taxes in this country, in exchange for 62% of the total national income. Meanwhile the bottom 20% pay 2.0% of the overall taxes in this country, in exchange for 2.8% of the total national income. You might look at those figures and go "well the poor aren't contributing much," and you'd be technically accurate, but as a percentage of their income, the bottom 20% are still paying 20.2% of their income in taxes, compared to 33.7% for the top 1%. People look at the figures you provided and go "well it's so unfair that the rich are contributing so much", when really we should be looking at that and saying "the bottom 20% are contributing about 11% less of their income in taxes than the top 20%, but their share of national income is 4.5% that of the top 20%.

I bet if you asked any poor person, they'd be glad to trade an extra 11% in taxes for 22 times more income. But we never frame it that way.

You receive more government benefits than just unemployment. You receive them as soon as you're born, and up until you die. We all do.

Also, as many others have pointed out, you didn't even pay into unemployment. Your employer(s) did. You may counter that the 2% or so they paid into a UI fund would have otherwise gone straight toward your wages, but you and I both know that's not true (with rare exceptions).

Social Security insolvency isn't a result of the government increasing the debt. The government partially increased the debt by borrowing FROM Social Security, to the tune of almost $2.9 trillion, why shouldn't that cut both ways? If the federal government can borrow from Social Security to engage in deficit spending and lower taxes, why shouldn't the federal government be required to raise taxes and lower spending to pay Social Security?

Really? There are people seriously still saying 'taxation is theft?'

Come on.

There's a guy who stops at the Burger King I go to with a pickup truck decorated with all kinds of shit like an upside down American flag and "Taxation is Theft soaped onto the back window.

That's disgusting as hell.








I mean...Burger King?

As a non-profit the Ayn Rand Institute doesn’t pay taxes.

Along a similar vein, it turns out that various churches (which don't pay taxes) have also received a COVID-19 bailout.

@Federal Farmer, how do you reconcile giving money to organizations which do not pay taxes? How could they be taking back "stolen" money?

I’m not a Randite, never read her books, don’t adhere to her philosophy. Ask someone who is.

I'm not claiming you are. You're the one asserting that COVID-19 bailouts are merely returning "stolen" money. How is that true when it comes to organizations which don't pay taxes?

That money is for the employees, not the business and I made my statement concerning myself only.

Since the main purpose of the PPP is to keep people employed, I have no problem with a church getting funds, as long as they meet the other criteria and it's legit being used to keep people on payroll when they would otherwise be laid off.