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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (42583)	3/30/2001 2:52:54 PM
From: Steve Dietrich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Hi JDN, The trustees offer several scenarios: pessimistic, optimistic, and one right down the middle. If you use the optimistic scenario (which assumes similar growth as does the CBO) SS is good for 75 years, well past when all the baby boomers will be dead, and there is no crisis. It's only under the less optimistic scenarios where there can be a shortfall. The Bush administration is using the optimistic number to project budget surpluses to pay for his tax cut, but uses the less optimistic numbers (under which there would be no surplus) to predict SS is in trouble to justify privatization and overhaul. He's cooking the books, and frankly being dishonest, to suit is political aims. If McNealy and Zander tried that at Sun i'd expect some of us would be pretty upset. As for taxes as a percentage of GDP, i've just had a lengthy debate over that on this very thread. In brief: since most of the new tax revenue is either capital gains or stock option bonuses (which too are capital gains, but taxed as income) and since the rise in the market doesn't count as GDP, no i don't find it at all strange that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has risen with the bull market. In fact it's exactly what you'd expect during such an extraordinary bull market. (That percentage will surely start to fall with this falling market.) Also the average, and the majority of Americans are paying less in federal income tax now than they have in several decades. So again, no i don't find anything peculiar or strange about the fact that tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has risen. Steve Dietrich