Just need to vent...

I can't tell what is sarcasm from what is opinion

 

I hate that particular map. Without a much better description of how it was produced, I don't learn much of anything useful from it.

I grew up in what is now a very red area, marked as a tax receiving state, and now live in a fairly green area, marked as a tax paying state. But a bunch of things are not adequately described and separated or adjusted for.

Some other sources have indicated that these tax flow maps include retirement entitlements, and the included Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes and benefits make up the lion's share of the imbalances. Since these programs don't pay benefits exactly proportional to one's wage earning history, but instead provide a greater benefits return, per dollar input as payroll tax, to low earners than to high earners, this element is effectively a marker of high- vs low-wage areas. I.e. green areas tend to have higher average wages than red areas, which naturally leads to a net flow of SSA and Medicare benefits to lower wage areas.

I've also seen plenty of retirees move away from the big green cities of their working years to red retirement areas. I.e. pay their payroll taxes on the green side, then draw their retirement benefits in a lower cost of living area on the red side.

Then there are enormous differences in federal land ownership between states. I grew up in a state where most land is owned by the feds. Being federally owned and essentially not populated, this land generally does not hold taxpaying families and businesses. (Some do earn their incomes from these lands, and pay lease or use fees to the feds, but these tend to be very low $/acre compared to developed privately owned lands.) However, these lands are managed and serviced by federal employees (NPS, USFS, BLM, etc.) paid from federal coffers. So while private lands effectively pay federal taxes, federal lands effectively consume federal resources.

Some strong red politicians would love to "fix" this federal land tax imbalance be selling much of it to private developers, and converting it from tax-consuming government use to tax-paying private use. Many blue politicians and voters (and I) view this as squandering and ruining and blocking public access to precious public resources.

I haven't seen anyone adequately address and adjust for these inherent tax-flow differences. Until that happens, I must dismiss these tax flow maps as empty political junkfood, good for nothing but political weapons.

 

good points. It gives one pause. Example that comes to mind;
Our home prior to retiring 3+ years ago was in a very nice community. Checking on zillow / redfin - many of the community homes in our old area now sell for 2 million +.

The community is surrounded by other nice communities. And - that city is surrounded by other very nice cities.
Property taxes on said new owners there - would easily be over $15K/yr just for property tax!!
That's a boatload of tax revenue coming in from 1000s & 1000s of homes - in the state that's only receiving $88 of each tax dollar. So perhaps serious redistribution to the down & out communities of East LA, Santa Ana, Watts, Compton Etc is equitable. In part because communities that can afford $15,000 just for their property tax alone? .... ie any given amount of $$ is a smaller percentage of their whole.
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So.....poor people are deadbeats 'eh?

That's what I call "saying the quiet part out loud."
Why not just call them 'deplorables?'

I dig it!
It's like seeing truck nutz or a [sic] rebel flag sticker in traffic.
I learn something useful about some people before I have to interact with them more directly.

As a bonus, the above red/green map stands as a nice counterbalance to: "making the wealthy pay their fair share." story.

 

Plus get the rewards dollars besides paying no interest on borrowed money. I have one giving 2%.

 

They still profit from transaction fees, so my heart doesn't bleed for them. Combined with the fees charged those who make mistakes and just barely miss fully paying on time, they're doing great, even before considering the debt-roll-over cash cow customers.

I've detected some salescritter reluctance.

... less than the typical transaction fees.

 

I guess the 'apples' call me a deadbeat, then.
(Goldman Sacs?)
I use their goofy titanium card to move money and get 2% back - AFTER confirming that they like money more than they like politics.
My first 2% back, no tax, purchase a few (5?) years back was an M9 pistol - and owing to my failures as a husband and a father I also use it to buy Apple products at a 3% discount after the 10% veterans discount.

@ auto dealers:
Cash?

Yeah.
I guess I could use cash.
Biblically, the borrower is slave to the lender......but the way I have it figured is that EJ gives me something like 8-9% back on my cash investments and GMAC only required me to pay 4-5% for my car loan (post 'Bidenomic rates')
Plus....if my financial ship runs aground, I can call them to repossess the vehicle, since I have spares.

Perhaps my public school education is failing me - but WHY would somebody pay CASH for a freekin' CAR?

 

I have not carried over credit card balance on any of my cards for as long as I have owned the cards... One card was closed recently by the bank for prolonged inactivity. But I still have 10 active cards from various financial institutions which I shuffle to use to maximize the cashback perks depending on what I am paying for. They varies perks from standard 1%-2% unlimited cashback to special offer 5% cashback or $200 sign-up bonus. They can call me "deadbeats" if they want. I am never going to allow them to collect obscenely high credit card interest from me. They make enough money in other ways.

 

I paid cash/personal check to buy our last two cars.

Picked out the exact car I wanted and negotiated/insisted on the exact price I would pay for the car before setting foot on the lot.

Did this all on the internet after test driving cars to see which one we wanted

At that point showed up with a check and picked up the cars.

Absolutely no negotiation - no finance charges - no card fees nothing.

That is why I will probably only use this method to buy cars again.

As an interesting side note: the Hyundai Dealer Salesman said he went ahead and ran the numbers for me and showed me I could access an extra $500 dollar discount by financing the vehicle and had talked to his Manager to approve the change and was ready to apply the discount after running a credit check with my approval - told him I wasn't interested but he was insistent- told him okay if he wanted to use his time to run a credit check. He came back in about 20 to 30 minutes saying they had run into a problem- and asked if I had ever experienced identity theft- told him no but that is exactly why myself as well as each member of my household has a credit freeze intact at each of the major credit bureaus - and no I was not interested in unfreezing them so they could run a credit check on me after I had told him multiple times I didn't want to finance the vehicle! I suggested that since he had already without my permission included the $500 discount on the vehicle for financing it I would agree to the original deal we ahead done on the internet and we would split the difference of the $500 financing discount by reducing the agreed upon internet deal by $250. He reluctantly took the new deal to his Manager and got it "approved".

To make a long story short people pay cash for a car to have complete control over the transaction and the process. It is probably the only way I would ever buy a car again. The Dealer does not control the process I do.

 

I take your point but to be fair I never felt that the last dealer I worked with 'had control' over anything except for whether or not they wanted to deal with a no-trade, no haggle sale.
We were in and out in about 30 minutes.
It would have been sooner but I offered their finance manager a chance to beat my pre-approved NFCU quote by at least a quarter point - provided they they do not make me sit through any mandatory On* or other 'free' offers.
He beat it by a half point.

Yes.

I could have written a check for the truck but I prefer to keep a cash 'emergency fund' which actually came in handy when the math wizards in my union decided to go on strike for a month and forfeit 8.33% of this year's income for slight increase (</> 1%?) in the company's pre-strike offer.
I even got to defer my payment for 2 months once GMAC was informed that I was being victimized by my employer's labour union.
Some of my co-workers have taken loans from their 401(k) and bragged about 'paying themselves back and saving the interest' but this is much MUCH worse than just paying GMAC 4-5%

I tell everyone that the only thing better than having an 825+ credit score would be to have a score of zero - but that's well out of my depth band as a telephone mechanic.

 

I do opposite. I buy almost everything on credit including car. For car buying, I use it for my advantage in negotiating the terms and price, discount, etc. The dealers are more opt to negotiate price and terms if I let them work on financing because in many cases they get some kick-back from the financial institution they use. Last 5 cars I purchased were all financed via dealer. Some of them were 0% APR loan, but all were low interest. The highest I paid on interest on the loan on the 5 cars was 2.99%. But I did not keep the loan for entire loan term. No early pay-off penalty in any of the loans I had, and all were paid off within 1-3 years. I actually had money to pay cash when purchasing the car, but when the cash invested is making 7% or better, it is better to keep the money invested and pay low interest loan.

The key is to look for and negotiate to get the lowest possible rate and highest discounts such that keeping cash invested will make more profit than using it to pay cash for the purchase. I loosely follow the Robert Kiyosaki's financial advises: "By understanding how to make money using other people's money" I take advantage of "a good debt" I borrow that "helps me build wealth".

 

People have different approaches and that is great.

There is no 'right way'.

Most everyone has different circumstances and it shapes their actions to do what works for them.

For us -no debt - none- is what works.

Certainly not wealthy but frugal, living within our means, with modest financial demands and doing that for the last 50 years.

 

We use the card on most everything including car purchases. Frequent flyer miles have gotten us several free flight trips . But we've found card companies only allow no more than $5,000 towards car buying. We've always paid the balance off every month every year.
As for high interest, think of it as grocery store prices in the ghetto. They have to charge more because they're theft Insurance is more. Credit card companies that stick it to you do so because they have to make up for the amount of people that discharge those debts via bankruptcy.
Some states no longer allow you to pay cash for new car purchases as organized crime did a lot of car purchases so it can wash dirty money.
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These needn't be mutually exclusive.

Most people find it exceedingly difficult to accurately predict when these positive investment time windows will end. Which they have done repeatedly during my investing experience.

During such downturns, when my employer was also running multiple rounds of layoffs, the no- and low-debt people appeared to have lower blood pressures and better sleep than the more heavily financed people.

Which states?

I believe the other members here were not referring to actual crinkling green cocaine-laced paper bills, but rather to cash equivalents such as checks.

 

Yes checks are another matter. Even so, once you get into five figures, the IRS requires (even checks) extra paperwork & dealerships will often be reluctant to fill out those forms. Don't know if it's sheer laziness or ignorance.
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Wondering about the reason for altering the quote. The word 'card' is not there in what Salamander_King wrote.

 

Of course, there is an inherent risk in investing. But at the same time there is also risk in owning a car debt free and not having enough cash (or cash equivalent liquid asset) for emergency. You have to balance the both side. Even though I can cash out my investment account to pay the mortgage off, I am keeping my mortgage with minimal monthly payment until it is paid off. I refinanced it when the mortgage rate was historical low some years ago. Now it is locked at 2% APR. On the other hand, my investment accounts even after dismal double digit negative growth a few years ago, is still having overall long term positive growth well over 2% APY.

EDIT TO ADD: BTW, my staggered CDs are very predictable with guaranteed return, and right now still getting average of 4.8% APY.

 

i think i grabbed part of the quote, & then wrongly thought the word was there, & then just typed it in to the quote. Now there's a bit of a conundrum ..... should I go back & change it? which gives the response (yours) a sort of meaninglessness? Even doing so, did I somehow evoke some sort of malice by adding the word 'card' ?? Wringing hands - im so conflicted

The more truncated post would say I made a mistake - but at least it (writing the word 'card') didn't change the meaning - but either way - is there some other kind of credit besides cards that was important to articulate to the understanding of what they are talking about?
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