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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch

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To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (72775)	2/24/2005 2:11:07 AM
From: Augustus Gloop	Read Replies (3) of 89467

Revising SS Step 1 is to realize that we have made a commitment to our aging population that we MUST and WILL make good on. The question is how to do that while slowly converting to personal ownership at the same time. Pride of ownership is something that EVERY American should and can experience. SS should partially be in a persons name to begin with and we should work towards fully funded SS in the future so as to take the corruption that goes with politicians sitting on HUGE amounts of our money that they view as "funny money." So with the responsibility to our aging population being the first responsibility my idea is this. Fist of all SS and medicare amounts to 15.3% from dollar 1 to about 88,000 dollars. 7.65% is paid by the employee and 7.65 is paid by the employer. For people making 20-30k as a family this is a real BITE! While I'm a republican I do have some compassion. We need to figure out a way for these lower income brackets (say up to the first 20k to pay nothing in personal withholding) so that they may use that money to survive. The employer would still pay their 7.65 but the employee would not. This would create a 7.65% increase in wages. Once you hit that magic number of 20k you would then start paying your 7.65% along with the employer 7.65%. But the deal on the next 20k of income is that the 7.65% the employee paid would be put into his or her name on the amount between 20k and 40k of income. This would create a pride of ownership and start the ball rolling in the direction of fully funded personal SS for the future. Now nothing in life is free so to account for this we would have to raise the upper end limit from 88k to a higher amount. While I don't want to do that I also understand we already are going to have to do something or SS WILL fail. So say it was raised to 125k - 150k. We could factor this raise in for a period of time that gets us through the lean years with the understanding that the ceiling would be reduced as the number of retired people declined in the future. This would not be a blank check offering like so many other temporary taxes that never get repealed as promised. We would close the loopholes on dividend distributions so that high wage earners would not be able to escape by simply increasing their dividends. We could also decide not to raise the ceiling on incomes of 88k but rather impose the tax at incomes above 500k or 1 million and collect from the super high wage earners. I would also go to people of retirement age today that were wealthy and ask if they would be willing to forego their SS payout. This would save money today and its not terribly unfair if they are wealthy. I say that because many people of retirement age today didn't pay the 15.3% their entire life. Many paid far less and it would be a gesture of good faith to the current generation of hard working Americans to help relieve the burden that the previous generation heaped upon us with some less than great decisions. I think there are many tiered, creative ways we could pull this off that would empower those with less earning power, build toward complete privatization of SS AND wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. It's going to cost something but if we work together we can solve this issue with less pain than we believe AND finish off an issue that has been looming for 20 years! excuse the typos please....this was done in haste and I would have to eyeball the numbers to give an EXACT idea....but you get the drift You want things done and done GREAT? Vote Gloop in 08 <g>

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