People to Debt Commission: Tax the Rich

thanks for your work here

The foundation makes contributions/grants to a range of “progressive” groups and/or organizations, and as noted in the article, most of the objectives outlined in the article are “progressive”, not even close to “right of center”. I would like to know where the “right of center” description comes from.And mbelvadi, where on earth do you get the idea that the SS fund is in good shape? It is nearly bankrupt, if not in the red already! The income limit on withholding of the SS tax is artificially low, and should be taxed on 100% of income (not the 90% in the article). My state retirement fund taxes 100% of my income at the state-mandated percentage. Why shouldn’t private sector earners be taxed on 100% of theirs for the federal retirement fund, even if the wealthy won’t be receiving benefits (due to their 401K or 403b accounts’ or company pension’s payout amounts)?

Crunchycon, according to the SocSec trustees’ most recent report, Social Security has accumulated roughly a $2.5 trillion surplus, precisely as the 1983 withholding increase was intended to do. As a result, SocSec is good for roughly another 40 years even if we do nothing, and can be funded out to a 75-year horizon with minimal changes. (Report is at SSA.gov.)Medicare is a different story. But it, as is our deficit in general, is driven by high and rising health-care costs, something the health-care reform enacted this year is SUPPOSED to help us get a handle on. Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but it’s mathematical fact that if we were to achieve the health-care cost efficiency of France or Switzerland, our deficit problem would be somewhere between negligible and nonexistent.We’re also spending a ridiculous amount of money on defense, including two wars that should have ended years ago. Defense cuts should total closer to 15-20% over 10 years.The Peterson Foundation wants to cut entitlements AS AN END IN ITSELF, not as a means of cutting the deficit, because doing so would enable an even greater upward transfer and concentration of wealth, which is already a huge problem. Anything and everything the commission or its spokesbots say should be greeted with the deepest possible skepticism.

Re #6:What would make the professor’s situation right:* The professor can’t collect Social Security* until he turns 75?* The professor can’t collect Social Security until he retires?* The professor is taxed progressively on his SS income while working (i.e., the less he earns the more SS he keeps)?* His Social Security goes to someone who really needs it until the professor really needs it?* The professor is forced to retire now?* He can’t collect Social Security with an income of $100,000 a year no matter how he earns it (investments, inheritance, etc.)?* Social Security is abolished to keep situations like the professor’s from occurring?* Some other way to make things equitable?* Social Security, remember, is not welfare and doesn’t require a pauper’s oath. It’s retirement insurance. The professor paid into the system and he’s entitled, when he’s age-eligible, to take payouts from it. Let’s say the professor gets $1800 a month or $21,600 a year, so his gross income (it’s all taxable) is $121,600 a year. Is that so unreasonable? Does stinkcat advocate some–ahem!–socialist income redistribution whereby all retirement incomes are capped at a max of, say, $100,000 a year?

Re #8:I rather thought so. This doesn’t have anything to do with the professor being 72 or his making $100,000 a year or, especially with (newly added, of course) that he’s “being watched like a hawk because he is beginning to lose competence.” It has everything to do with being yet another free-market absolutist (“if this professor does not have enough in savings we can let him live under a bridge”), merciless view that a stable society somehow doesn’t need to take care of people who “don’t have enough in [their] savings” not to have to live under bridges in their old age.Realizing that this will probably bring a bunch of comments from the usual self-righteous pseudo-self-reliant economic laissez-faire tough guys who can’t stand to see any of those “small people” getting Government largesse that should rightly go to Halliburton and Archer Daniels Midland, I’ll simply say that I don’t really want to see 72-year-old professors, no matter what they “should have” saved up for retirement, having to live under bridges.

Not many out loud, but you know what they say: “Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.” (Uh, who was the CEO of Halliburton?) I’ll stipulate that ADM is big enough to play both sides of the aisle and it seems to buy its way out of any crosshairs on PBS with big contributions. But when anybody wants to reduce Federal subsidizes to ADM, Cargill, and the like, they run up against red state conservative senators. But again, Social Security isn’t “welfare.” The 72-year-old professor paid into the system, probably enough (figuring he’s worked as a professor at an average salary of about $50,000 for 25 years–he’s probably been a professor more like thirty years–both his and his employer’s contributions) to give him that $1800 a month with a couple of COLA bumps for twelve or 13 years, i.e., until he’s 85. But of course, as long as he’s working, he’s still paying into SS as is his employer. Anyway, the actuarial charts say he’ll die before he’s 85 and, therefore, “cheat” no one.It never ceases to amaze me how anybody who shuffles papers for a living (which is what professor generally do, as opposed to roughnecking on oil rigs, or paving roads, or farming) can ge against “welfare,” as if their paper-shuffling didn’t rest on top of a whole bunch of reliances of the society that other people have built. There used to be a guy on these threads who was a real laissez-faire professor of economics, who decried living off the backs of the taxpayers, who taught in–you guessed it–a state university, i.e., on the public teat. His rationale was that he was making a big economic sacrifice because if he chose, he could make a bundle in private enterprise. stinkcat ain’t that guy, is he?And maybe I’m just soft and sentimental, but I don’t think I’d get much satsifaction passing by thousands of people living under bridges because they didn’t save enough for retirement (or had what they saved wiped out in the recent meltdown). I don’t think it’s wise policy for the stability and health of the society as a whole, either.

Re #12:My figures could be off, and actually I misstyped $50,000 instead of $60,000 for an average income, which itself is only a guesstimate. Life expectancy for an American male right now is between 75 and 76 years, so our professor–who’s already showing signs of deterioration (“beginning to lose competence” sounds more like creeping senile dementia than it does merely that he still lectures from old yellow’d notes)–is not likely to outlive his Social Security nestegg.As to “If Social Security is not welfare, then why do we need the government to provide it?”: a) Governments from Federal to state to local provide services–defense, fire and police protection, public schools, parks, environmental safeguards, unemployment insurance, etc., etc.–that are not regarded as “welfare” simply because they’re not provided by private enterprise; b) It has been deemed appropriate and necessay and Constitution-defensible that the society has an interest in not having a whole lot of people living under bridges simply because–for whatever reason, from overspending to underemployment to personal tragedy–they didn’t save up enough money to put three squares on the table and a roof over their heads. While in some libertarian fantasy world, where people are islands unto themselves, those who were careless with their money during their working years or had the bad luck to lose their jobs to China would live under bridges in their old age, it doesn’t and shouldn’t work that way in a modern democratic and, yes, reasonably compassionate society.I’ve sometimes had the hunch that if you called the portion of one’s taxes that went to social services a “Stable Society User Fee,” with the payer at liberty, in the free market of all those countries on the planet to choose from, to find a country with a lower fee or more stability, depending on what the customer wanted, conservatives would be less disgruntled at seeing the Government pay to keep people from living under bridges.

Re #6 – 14. . . Personally, I would like to see Social Security privatized. Until then, however, I’m afraid that Goxewu is absolutely correct in the context of this discussion. SS is retirement insurance into which everyone pays and everyone receives. As such, unlike social welfare programs, it is the opposite of welfare. I realize that there has been a lot of tinkering so that those who have paid nothing can get SSI checks and lots of people who haven’t paid are getting plenty. However. . The basic concept of Social Security is not welfare. And stinkcat, we should scream that from the highest mountain tops. Why? Because people like Ghilarducci, who want to remove the cap on income while introducing means testing for benefits, would turn it into welfare in a second given the chance. Better to leave the retirement portion of SS the way it is, than to have what hardworking middle-class people have put into the system taken from them and given to more “deserving” recipients.Tax the rich indeed. Who the hell do you think already pays the bills around this country? The top 1% of income earners pay 39% of all income taxes. The top 50% pay 97% of income taxes. The rich are already paying their share and the share of millions of others, as are the middle class. And yes, I know that the “poor” are still paying “payroll tax,” but as Goxewu pointed out, that’s retirement insurance – they will get that back. And Medicare is medical insurance – same thing. When we get to the point that the majority of the people can mandate, through legislative means, that the minority of the people must pay for everything they want, this country is doomed. Tax the rich indeed!