Some interesting facts concerning the vast expansion and corruption of social security...
The Social Security Act of 1935 set the taxable maximum at $3,000. Income earned above this amount was not subject to Social Security taxes. This threshold was a fixed amount that was not indexed for inflation or wage levels.
In 1977, the 95th Congress and Democratic President Jimmy Carter passed a law increasing the taxable maximum faster than average wage levels in 1979, 1980, and 1981 by a total of 68%.
Adjusting for inflation, the taxable maximum has been increased by a factor of 3.9 times since 1950.
The Social Security Act of 1935 set the initial tax rate at 2% (employee and employer combined) and specified increases that would bring this rate to 6% by 1949.
In 2010, the 111th Congress (controlled by Democrats) and Democratic President Barack Obama passed a law temporarily decreasing the Social Security payroll tax during 2011 by two percentage points (from 12.4% to 10.4%). This law also required that monies equivalent to the decreased payroll taxes be transferred to the Social Security program from the general fund of the U.S. Treasury. The general fund of the U.S. Treasury is funded by income taxes (66%), corporate income taxes (23%), excise taxes (5%), and other miscellaneous taxes (6%).
I'm actually all for getting rid of the payroll taxes (SS and Medicare/Medicaid) and just rolling it all into the normal income tax. But the income tax rate then needs to start at 10%, no matter how much you earn.
At the outset of the Social Security program, the federal government published an informational pamphlet that stated the following with regard to Social Security taxes:
And finally, beginning in 1949, 12 years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay.
Accounting for inflation, this promise equates to a maximum tax collection of $1,655 per person in 2010 dollars.
In 2010, the maximum payroll tax collection per person was $13,243 or eight times the promised maximum.
For workers who earned average wages and retired at the age of 65 in 1980, it took 2.8 years of receiving old-age benefits to recover the value of their payroll taxes (including interest). For workers who retired in 2003, it will take 17.4 years. For workers who will retire in 2020, it will take 21.6 years.[57] This assumes Social Security will have enough money to pay scheduled benefits for this entire period, which it is not projected to have.
My dearly beloved and sacred socialist leftist communist dirtbag agenda would pretty much have the gov't fix our roads teach our kids fight our fires defend our borders and take a wee bit care of our old and actually really sick people unable to care for themselves at all.
Oh yeah, and leave me enough money in my measly paycheck to eat and etc. So Obama ( bastard that he is) wants to extend a measly little payroll taxbreak. The GOP wants to take it back. Easy for them to give a Billionaire a new tax break, but a lot easier to take one away from somebody not so rich, or a small business perhaps?
Corporate welfare, hell that's OK.
Last year should prove the corporate fallacy. Highest corporate profits ever, and yet, pretty crappy economy, dontcha think? How much of that corporate profit came from the taxpayer? I.E. my paycheck? A lot. How much of my paycheck came from the corporate profit? 0.000000000%!
90% of business, money and employment in this country are basically small business, and the gov't answer to that these days seems to be to put you out of business, the corporations love it, too. Opens up more for them.
Bad for us in the long run.
GOP yactics, just go on the attack. Keep parroting the same lies over and over again, and eventually the world will believe them.
Ya, I'm a real left wing commie nut job. WTFU! You have got to be kidding me! Anybody actually bother to read what I have to say?
I badmouth the whole damn gov't, GOP as well as all the other dirtbags, but you humorless soulless hard core "Republicans" or whatever the heck you guys are?
Would brand me as some sort of left wing welfare loving gov't handout crackpot. I've had enough of this raping we're being forced to accept and it gets worse every year. Unless you're at the top of the foodchain, and I suppose the most vocal of you GOP types on here may well be, you should all be screaming along with me, not at me!
Now I remember why I usually avoid any type of politico discussion on this lopsided board.
Top heavy is a bad way to be, whether it's a motorcycle, a car, a boat, a country or an economy.
And top heavy it is, the world economy in a way it has perhaps never seen in history. ANd look how crappy it is! Oh yeah, real good for a very select very few people, and the rest of us, weeeelll, not so great. Heck, atleast I have a job, they're going to take whatever ir is they take from my paycheck, and until I am self employed again I'll just have to be OK with it, but I am going to grouse about it though! I'm done with this thread, have fun!
So Obama ( bastard that he is) wants to extend a measly little payroll taxbreak. The GOP wants to take it back.
Ok, so the bill Obama signed, that expires as written is the fault of the GOP? I've asked a couple of times for explanation of what the heck you're talking about. Is it THAT bill?
I'm no fan of the GOP. The party of Lincoln is long gone. The Dem's, the Party of slavery is somewhat different now, as the last admitted KKK member serving in Congress passed away a short time ago. Bill Clinton Eulogized that fine Congressman. http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/0 7/02/bill_clinton_byrd_klan
Now, the R's have a rep of being the Party of Big Business. Truth. The R's have a rep for party of the rich. Untrue. The D's until the McCain-Fiengold bribery reform law got much more of their bribes from rich folk than the R's. Obama broke that mold by using the idiocy of McCain-Fiengold to launder more money than any pol in history. Brilliant.
You don't mind if I use the old anglo saxon term for "campaign contribution" do you?
The D's have a rep for civil rights. Not true. The R's under LBJ were more responsible for equal rights. Since then the D's have been more responsible for dole spending, with mixed results. IMHO actions that result in more dependency and the breakup of the traditional family are not positive civil rights actions. But that's fodder for another thread.
Suffice to say the best solution seems to ME to fire all the Party types, both parties, take all the campaign money from all the congressional & Presidential candidates, including Congress war chests, and apply it to the debt. I realize that's a pipe dream, since the R's and D's would unite to keep their positions of power and privilege. By any means necessary.
One more time. Bigblack is it the 2% temporary ss tax break you are talking about? Please reference where the evil GOP is trying to stop it.
Yes it is the 6.2 to 4.2% 1 year payroll rollback. "Mr. President" is trying to get it extended, and apparently some Republicans( and probably dems, too) have come out against this.
Sorry, too late and lazy to find and link my references, I think it was actually in print?
I'm sure nothing is carved in stone yet, so plenty of time for everyone to waffle, including the head idiot, but I can always hope if enough people complain loudly enough, maybe we get to keep this one another year.
It appears to me (that) people who vote Democratic Party WANT higher taxes and should be appreciative of this effort to have more of their paycheck taken away.
So what do you do with the SS system? It was heading for insolvency prior to the 2% temporary cut. As more baby boomers retire it is going to continue to pay out much faster than it comes in. The Democrats raised hell just a few years ago when Republicans wanted to try to address this issue. Now you want to bankrupt the system even sooner. I'd like to hear your exit strategy from the current SS system. Bernie Madoff totally demonized by the media and sent to jail for the rest of his life for a far smaller ponzi scheme.
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