Scary new wage data

[JS80]

You have "working hard" confused with "worked to death." Working your brain "hard" hardly ever leads to a crippling disability or early death.

I know you're incapable of using your brain with that UCSD education. How does it feel to be rejected from Berkeley and UCLA?

 

[mizzou]

Wtf do you do with all that cash? Id be happy with just a few mil in my entire life

 

[ShawnD1]

Wtf do you do with all that cash? Id be happy with just a few mil in my entire life

I would drive my car in second gear all the time just so it has more pep. Yeah it burns like 30x as much gas to constantly be reving a 5000rpm, but I gots da money. Don't worry brah.

 

[Lanyap]

The 2009 number was in error and has been corrected.

‘Invalid’ Forms by Supposed Billionaires Skew U.S. Wage Figures

November 02, 2010, 12:02 AM EDT

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The Social Security Administration asked its inspector general to investigate how a $32.3 billion mistake skewed its statistics on 2009 wages in the U.S.

Two people were found to have filed multiple W-2 forms that made them into multibillionaires, an agency official said yesterday. Those reports threw statistical wage tables out of whack and, in figures released Oct. 15, made it appear that top U.S. earners had seen their pay quintuple in 2009 to an average of $519 million.

The agency yesterday released corrected tables that showed the average incomes of the top earners, in fact, declined 7.7 percent to $84 million each.

Social Security spokesman Mark Lassiter provided few details about the W-2 forms and declined to answer questions about how they were filed, how many were filed by the same two people, or if a hoax was suspected. “We call it erroneous, you call it fictitious. It’s the same thing,” Lassiter said. “There were some invalid, I guess is the best way to put it, W- 2s.”

The W-2 is a tax form on which employers report their workers’ compensation. Taxpayers must provide a copy when they file tax returns.

Lassiter said this is the first time Social Security statistics have been affected by erroneous filings. A written request detailing concerns about the data was sent yesterday to the Office of the Inspector General, he said.

Jonathan Lasher, a spokesman for the inspector general’s office, confirmed the request. “It wouldn’t be an actionable investigation at this point, more properly an allegation, but we are looking into it,” Lasher said.

High Earners

The Social Security Administration figures are based on forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service. It wasn’t known yesterday whether the IRS was conducting its own investigation into how the W-2 forms were submitted. IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said he didn’t “have any immediate comment.”

Bloomberg News wrote a report last week about high-earners’ income after questioning Social Security officials about record- high wages found in the statistics. The agency’s staff confirmed the data, though they began reviewing W-2s by hand after the news story was published.

Yesterday, the Social Security office announced it found “invalid” wages from two of the 74 top wage earners detailed in its data.

The data were part of the National Average Wage Index and contained the pay for 74 Americans who earned more than $50 million in 2009. The Social Security review found two tax filers, between them, reported more than $32 billion in wages and officials decided to invalidate those filings.

Error Discovered

“We discovered an error in the net compensation for wage earners earning $50 million and over and have adjusted those figures downward,” Lassiter said in an initial e-mail.

The combined total earned by the top Americans fell to $6 billion last year from $11.9 billion in 2008, the agency said in the corrected report.

A comparison of the Oct. 15 data and the corrected figures show the change affected wage statistics more broadly. The Oct. 15 index indicated that the average wage nationwide fell $384 to $39,269 in 2009. The corrected index shows averages wages fell $598 to $39,055.

Lassiter said he couldn’t explain why the mistake wasn’t detected previously.

“We have checks in place, but these slipped through,” he said. The error would have eventually been detected as part of a reconciliation of the data with the IRS, he said.

--Editors: Christine Spolar, Bob Drummond.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...posed-billionaires-skew-u-s-wage-figures.html

 

[theeedude]

Only $84 Million each? Poor guys, get the a tax cut asap.

 

[Engineer]

Click me

Get this: The median income for 25- to 34-year-olds in 2009 was $50,199 — 7.6% lower than it was in 1999, after adjusting for inflation.

Sign of things to come....really scary wage data?

 

[Patranus]

How does someone else making money prevent you from going out, starting your own business, and making your own money?

(Hint: it doesn't)

 

[Acanthus]

How does someone else making money prevent you from going out, starting your own business, and making your own money?

(Hint: it doesn't)

The laws they set up to crush small business competition through lobbying?

Didn't you JUST start a thread about this last week? How a lot of regulations are out there specifically to stifle competition?

 

[BoberFett]

The laws they set up to crush small business competition through lobbying?

Didn't you JUST start a thread about this last week? How a lot of regulations are out there specifically to stifle competition?

I believe that was PJabber.

Though I do understand it's hard to keep track of which partisan is which around here. I know I have trouble sometimes.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

How does someone else making money prevent you from going out, starting your own business, and making your own money?

(Hint: it doesn't)

Yes it does. Demand/opportunity for any specific thing is not infinite. There are a lot of folks that need to start looking at the side other than supply in economics.

 

[Patranus]

The laws they set up to crush small business competition through lobbying?

Didn't you JUST start a thread about this last week? How a lot of regulations are out there specifically to stifle competition?

Nope.

In any event it is comical to watch the "progressives" get their panties in a bunch when the king "progressive" manufactured this constitutional right for the federal government during the great depression.

 

[Patranus]

Yes it does. Demand/opportunity for any specific thing is not infinite. There are a lot of folks that need to start looking at the side other than supply in economics.

Tell that to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates back in the 70s when they were going against IBM.

One created a demand (an OS) and the other created an opportunity.

 

[Moonbeam]

The data is just data, facts about what is. From data we can have programmed reactions depending on the emotional attachments we've been inculcated with.

The data tells us our own story by reflection. The facts, however, stay facts. They are what is happening in our country within the parameters of what is measured by the data.

Good or bad, you supply that. I wouldn't expect a lot of objectivity where data triggers emotional feelings that create a sense of certainty rather than self examination.

There are our reflexive reactors have all the answers and those who self analyze in order to grow in self understanding, fanatics or students of life. Which are you?

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Tell that to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates back in the 70s when they were going against IBM.

One created a demand (an OS) and the other created an opportunity.

Jesus Christ, they fulfilled an existing demand, and took advantage of an existing opportunity, they didn't create either. Please learn how economics works.

 

[Zebo]

Offshore jobs, own the insurance companies you're forced to buy from, the debt we are forced to service, Banks that fraudulent stole Americans savings with AAA garbage, own both parties, and only pay 15%!!! After expenses which are endless and can only be denied! Only IRS crime is evasion not stupid.. It's the American way!

Or as lenona would say "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

 

[Craig234]

How does someone else making money prevent you from going out, starting your own business, and making your own money?

(Hint: it doesn't)

Depending how they do it, it can, and when there's an excessive concentration of wealth, it does, for many. This is one of the main misunderstandings by the right.

 

[BoberFett]

Depending how they do it, it can, and when there's an excessive concentration of wealth, it does, for many. This is one of the main misunderstandings by the right.

Yes, and it never hurts to have your beloved government help them out through onerous regulation.

Government does more to stifle competition than any competitor ever could.

 

[Zebo]

Everyone misunderstands but you Craig all mighty.

 

[JS80]

Jesus Christ, they fulfilled an existing demand, and took advantage of an existing opportunity, they didn't create either. Please learn how economics works.

 

[piasabird]

Probably a lot of the more well - off people depend on their stock options and bonuses to put them over the 50 billion mark. So income from stock is probably going down also. If you make that much money you can probably move your HQ's overseas to save on having to pay taxes. If there is a proposed tax increase on dividends and capital gains, there is no longer a reason to stay in the USA.

With these conditions and socialist health care there is also a danger that the best doctors will move to off-shore locations. Imagine going to a vacation spot to get a heart bypass??? There is a good possibility that you could be receiving care in the bahamas or in china.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

You know what, it doesn't even matter, you're not worth replying to.

 

[werepossum]

You have to understand the progressive mantra. No one earns success, they are simply lucky to be in the right place at the right time. That way there's no feelings of guilt when they take the fruit of someone's labor for themselves - "they don't deserve to have more than me, they were just lucky."

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

And the conservative mantra is to ignore 50% of economics.

Here's an example that even a moron can understand, but I'm sure I'm still wasting my time. Can anyone be a CEO? Maybe. Can everyone be CEO? No. Do you get it yet? There is NOT an infinite amount of opportunity.

 

[nonlnear]

And the conservative mantra is to ignore 50% of economics.

Here's an example that even a moron can understand, but I'm sure I'm still wasting my time. Can anyone be a CEO? Maybe. Can everyone be CEO? No.

Wrong. Anybody can take a few bucks ot the courthouse and start a corporation with themselves as CEO. Doesn't mean they'll be able to parlay it into a success by wall street's standards, but they can print whatever they want on their business cards if they really want to...

Do you get it yet? There is NOT an infinite amount of opportunity.

There are as many opportunities as people believe there are. An opportunity is nothing more than an abstraction used by a person to achieve a goal. What you were hoping to connect your train of thought to is the fact that there is not an infinite amount of wealth and social status to go 'round. That's true, but it's far more mundane when you put it that way.

On the other hand, there is an infinite amount of contentment and joy to be had, and it can all be achieved.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Context of the thread dude. Clearly I meant a CEO that one would want to be, you know, a filthy rich successful one. And there is a limited amount of opportunity to be one. Even, like you said, if everyone went and started their own company. And clearly the opportunity I was referring to was, again, be financially successful. Which can have a direct impact on contentment and joy. You're a smart guy, stop just being contrarian.