Who says the Democrats recycle the same tired ideas? From ABC News: "Obama floats Social Security tax hike"
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is considering a major tax hike on the rich to shore up the nation's Social Security system.Brilliant concept. Except that when FDR was formulating Social Security, he knew the program would have no political support if Americans knew that the super-rich were going to get back a benefit proportional to their larger income. So the cap on earnings taxed (which, adjusted for inflation, is now $97,000) was also a cap on the maximum benefit any American could expect.
"If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,000," Obama wrote this week in an Iowa newspaper, "we could eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall."
By eliminating the cap, Obama (and Edwards and other Democrats who have floated the idea) will alter Social Security from an entitlement that taxes all and benefits all to a welfare program that funnels money from the rich to the poor. But when you have no real solutions, taxing "the other guy" is always a crowd pleaser.
4 comments:
what if....
what if the feds made the first $35,000 SOC SEC TAX FREE
and then raised the cap to
whatever it had to be to make it an even-steven trade off for the "fund"?
(EVERYONE would get their first 35,000 without soc sec tax - even rich people. We'd have to tax the income from 36.000 to 97,000 AND BEYOND at same current rate.)
YES: this would be welfare, but would SEEM to benefit the working stiff, at least.
THEN... and here's the KEY KEY KEY sweetener:
then....
the amount that WOULD HAVE BEEN TAXED (the soc sec tax rate times 35,000) we let EVERYONE out into TAX FREE PRIVATE RETIREMENT PLANS.
and people get to keep it TAX FREE (and not just tax deferred) if they reduce the amount they take from soc sec upon retirement.
WE GET PRIVATIZATION.
THE LEFT GETS WELFARE/SOAK THE RICH.
and we get to save the current system.
I think it might be a good trade.
What do you think?
How about we just raise the friggin' age to 67 or 68 already? Or would that be too simple?
What if we introduced freedom and abolished the Ponzi scheme? What if we let people keep their own money and invest how they want?
io agree itza ponzi scheme. the problem is it takes poltics to get rid of it.
how about this:
people who work after retirement ager and don;t take their soc sec get to keep their soc sec tax!
Post a Comment