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If they cuts SS, cut it on people who were employees.
How would you justify that? Employees have all paid what they were obligated to pay.
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My husband has been self employed since he was 22, he's 70 now. So we have paid in both the employer and employee part ouselves. We and other job creators deserve our full benefits.
I don't disagree that you deserve your full benefits. But, so does everyone else who paid into SS over the course of their career. You chose to be self-employed and, therefore, chose to pay the employer portion of the obligation. Nobody forced you to do that. Obviously, you found it far more lucrative to employ yourself even with paying the additional FICA as your own employer.
OK, for those who agree with the OP title to this thread: Just how much of the national wealth do you think the American people, collectively, are "entitled" to, just as a birthright? Or do you think that nobody is entitled to anything unless they competitively grabbed what they could for themselves, and those who were not so inclined or capable, are entitled to nothing? Or very little? How much? Give me a target number, for us to strive for, and justify your calculation.
If a "deadbeat" is obliged to the laws of the land, and taxes, and military service, and jury duty, and civil obedience, and responsible parenting, and recycling, what does he get in return?
High tax rates are the only way we know of to create a sustainable economic expansion. If we go back to a 90% marginal tax rate, high earners will be forced to find productive investments for their money. Start a new business, it's tax free. Build a new factory, it's tax free. Pocket the money to buy a yacht, sorry, you get to keep 10%. High tax rates create jobs, reducing the need for government subsidies and making the necessary ones easier to afford. Meanwhile, the rich people get to create wealth right and left, making them richer than ever. Everybody wins.
Sorry but that is ridiculous. Nobody should have to pay 90% of their money to the government.
If you think taxes need to go up on the super wealthy, I'm with you there. But I'll draw the line well below 90%. Who do these liberals think they are - God? , that they have claim to 90% of someone's money?
Sorry but that is ridiculous. Nobody should have to pay 90% of their money to the government.
If you think taxes need to go up on the super wealthy, I'm with you there. But I'll draw the line well below 90%. Who do these liberals think they are - God? , that they have claim to 90% of someone's money?
90% marginal taxes are a historical tax rate here in the US. This rate helped pay for the cost of WWII and created the post WWII middle class boom due to the huge incentive for business owners to invest profits and expand their business rather than pay the 90% rate.
I guess it was us liberals who paid attention in HS History Class.
How would you justify that? Employees have all paid what they were obligated to pay.
I don't disagree that you deserve your full benefits. But, so does everyone else who paid into SS over the course of their career. You chose to be self-employed and, therefore, chose to pay the employer portion of the obligation. Nobody forced you to do that. Obviously, you found it far more lucrative to employ yourself even with paying the additional FICA as your own employer.
This is actually interesting..the first graph shows where money comes from - the most comes from individual income tax, then next are payroll taxes with nothing else even coming close:
Now, they also say that payroll taxes end up being paid almost entirely by the individual, NOT the business because they simply take that part out of the wages paid:
So it is individuals who WORK (not live off investments) that pay the huge majority of what funds the government...businesses get off with practically nothing, and even less now than they did.
90% marginal taxes are a historical tax rate here in the US. This rate helped pay for the cost of WWII and created the post WWII middle class boom due to the huge incentive for business owners to invest profits and expand their business rather than pay the 90% rate.
I guess it was us liberals who paid attention in HS History Class.
Your answer is disingenuous and it ignores the reality that the so-called "rich" are a tiny fraction of the tax payers. BTW if a 90% rate was good as you claim, then why not raise the top rate to 99%? Outright confiscation maybe?
To address some of the recent issues - no one back in the "good old days" paid 90% tax rate or even remotely close to that, which on paper applied to those on the very highest bracket which corrected for inflation and taking the effective rate was at a salary level of like $3 million dollars. No one made that, on paper. Loopholes existed then as they do now. In reality the top .01 paid something like 45%. Much of the loopholes were eliminated in the tax reforms of 1986 but they have crept back in.
Two "loopholes" have been eliminated due to Trump's tax plan however - limits on the mortgage interest deductions and limits on deductions for state income tax. Those, ironically, punish the rich the most - those that have huge incomes and McMansions. They do not punish the poor. Ironically, the people complaining about this elimination that hurt the rich the most were the liberal politicians representing these high tax, high income states of California and the Northeast.
Loopholes need to be eliminated but again that is not the solution to the topic of this thread - entitlements. And once again the heart of this topic is healthcare. You can't tax your way to a solution for healthcare because it will only delay the unsustainability of the issue and eventually drag down the rest of the economy. You can tax the rich all you want but it doesn't address the issue. Besides - the rich have there one final loophole that cannot be legislated away - pack up and move to another country.
It's a mission accomplished for the oligarchy running this country now as we continue to snipe at one another over "entitlements" and the mythical welfare queens buying steak and lobster on their SNAP cards as the corporations continue to rack up record profits, and many of our politicians enabling while feeding from the open cookie jar. The dumbing down of America is nearly complete...
Like usual, this stuff is crazed. Social Security is the single most successful government program in the history of the United State. It ended elderly poverty. Easily 2/3 of the country would be homeless and starving when they hit the life event where we can’t work.
Social Security is 70% funded which is really good by today’s massive deficit standards. It won’t take much tweaking to make the program cash flow neutral. Today’s rhetoric is driven by rich people who want to defer the inevitable tax hikes needed to properly fund the program. They own most of the stock in the corporations that pay 50% of payroll taxes. They end up paying the majority of the tax increase. The rhetoric is really cynical since it’s just piling up the national debt and risking a huge collapse that will harm all of us.
Medicare is the same issue. People 65+ can’t afford market rate health insurance. It’s a social obligation for the rest of us to subsidize those premiums. The program is underfunded and, again, rich people own the corporations that will see the tax hike so they want to cut the program or at least delay the tax hike as long as possible.
The rest of the safety net for non-elderly has a different problem. We have a societal problem that has created a permanent underclass with generational poverty. What we’re doing today isn’t working. Just zeroing out the safety net and letting them starve is cruel. We need to, as a society, insist that people become contributing members of society.
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