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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Road Walker who wrote (231175)4/29/2005 6:31:49 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 1572209
 
There is a dedicated SS tax that is running a surplus.

Every tax runs a surplus. It doesn't change anything about the spending. The program as a whole runs a surplus (for now) but the spending is still enormous and a dedicated tax doesn't change that fact. If there was no SS tax but we had a higher income tax, or other non dedicated tax that produced the same revenue it wouldn't change our fiscal situation. The fact that the tax is dedicated doesn't mean that the spending can simply be ignored or even that it should be treated differently than other spending. Spending is spending.

The main reason for the dedicated tax is to make it harder to change or eliminate social security. People figure "I put my money in, now I want my benefits". If it had been paid through the income tax just as much money would have gone in, and just as much would go out, but they would not be as psychologically connected.

You would think, as a libertarian, that you would support transparency.

Transparency is in general a good thing but labeling the portion of your tax that goes to various types of spending is not as important as reducing the taxing and spending. If people want to know how much we spend on various things that information is in the budget, and in analysis and summaries can be found online. In any case the SS program is not highly transparent or well understood by most people.

Tim
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