Republicans Say the Darndest Things!

Agree. This has been the business model for a long time. They get their profit from the snacks and convenience store items.

I would think it matters how much competition there is. My father’s rule is to buy gas at an exit with at least two gas stations as that way they’re competing with each other. I think on average that’s still true. If a station is the only game in town they’re going to engage in a bit of monopolistic pricing and profit off the gas too.

Definitely see that. If you’re the last gas station for several miles you can charge more too.

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Didn’t some Republican recently use a Russian ship sunk by Ukraine in one of their recent adds?

That was for a $24k income – back before you told me they have three kids.

Now I’m using the $42,212 from the post I quoted. $42,212 x .0765 = $3,229.

More new information. What kind of job isn’t subject to Social Security/Medicare tax?

I think some government jobs still have classifications that don’t pay into SS but this if becoming a thread about Twig’s family welfare abuse more than Republicans say the darndest thing tangent.

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I used to fly in and out of IAH a lot, with a rental car. There were two gas stations near the airport, and one was consistently about $0.15/gal more than the other.

And it was because if you were heading TO the airport, one was a lot easier to get into. To save $0.15/gal you had to cross over a busy street, and then it was more hassle to get back in the right direction. Not a ton of hassle, might cost you five minutes. But I always used the more expensive one, because my company was footing the bill.

Economics is fun.

I very clearly said, at least twice, that they are earning in the neighborhood of $24,000 and the rest are retirement distributions. You don’t pay FICA tax on retirement distributions.

Tons of state/municipal/school district jobs.

Thinking about this some more, I think there was a couple of years when they would have had zero income subject to FICA tax, but now a portion of hers would be.

He’s a low-level elected official. She’s a lifeguard and also does some stuff for the local school district. But for a while she was working for the municipal rec center, which is when none of their income would have been subject to FICA tax. Now she’s at a private pool so she’d be paying FICA on the lifeguard income, but he certainly isn’t, and she wouldn’t be for the school district stuff. They also work all of the polls, which is also not subject to FICA tax. And no, certainly not in his district as that’s definitely not allowed.

His annual salary is published on the city’s web site and is $12,000. She probably makes similar.

Jury duty income is also not subject to FICA tax, although not applicable in their case in recent memory, but another type of income with no FICA tax.

Is it abuse or an unintended consequence?

They’d probably do pretty similar as they’re doing even with none of the incentives. They’d literally have to lie on their taxes to not take advantage of the largesse.

Their plan was always to stay off Medicaid and there’s just about no way to get decent individual insurance these days without going through Obamacare.

I think some old RR unions are exempt.

I recall seeing references to that a lot when working in pensions.

The individual market before the ACA was shitty. Thanks, Obama.

I don’t know how much to begrudge the FIRE folks, honestly. Many of them work in tech with large salaries and maybe stock options, and wind up paying a lot of FIT and cap gains tax for the ~15 years they work. I know the system is designed to help low-income people and I’m glad it’s there for that, but I don’t get too bent out of shape at a small number of FIRE folks gaming the system.

Some/many teachers are SS exempt, including my wife when she taught at a college in Colorado.

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It was fine if you were healthy, and Obamacare basically f—-ed those people, which included my Dad & stepmom.

Not just the teachers… the janitors and secretaries and Pilates instructors at the school’s fitness center as well.

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That appears to be the largest single category. But, even at that “In 2018, one-quarter of state and local government employees—approximately 6.5 million workers—were not covered by Social Security on their current job.”

You had said “hobby jobs”, I imagined wood working (probably because that’s the kind of hobby job I would do).

Also from SS “Federal law allows certain state and local governments to exclude employees from Social Security coverage if those employees are provided with a sufficiently generous pension.”

So if you didn’t need health care the health care market was great!

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Who wants to re-litigate Obamacare on a Friday???

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Eh, healthy as in “didn’t have AIDS or cancer before you signed up”. Not “never needs to go to the doctor”.

https://twitter.com/reallyamerican1/status/1578384945688576000?s=46&t=5cdkr__-6msfdGFEPMkLDQ

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