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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (220674)	2/24/2005 6:54:59 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573213

1. Raise the FICA cap, maybe to $150K Which would amount to a major tax increase, and not even the old Democratic standby of going after the super wealthy but rather a tax increase on well off working people. Change the COL adjustment to an average of wage/price inflation. Either that or just price inflation. Raise the FICA tax by 1% on both employer and employee sides. And raise the cap? You really do want to raise taxes don't you. I might accept raising the cap in return for a lowering of rates. What some people aren't comprehending is that the program is a pyramid or ponzi scheme. Basic arithmetic should make it clear to any thinking person that you can't take a pyramid scheme and make it viable by increasing the amount of money each person on the bottom of the pyramid scheme pays; eventually, the liability is going to surpass the ability to levy taxes. You can make it stay together longer. You can prolong its collapse (at the expense of harming more people when it DOES collapse). You simply can't take a structurally unsound system and make it better by upping the ante.

To: TimF who wrote (220674)	2/24/2005 8:49:29 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573213

re: Which would amount to a major tax increase, and not even the old Democratic standby of going after the super wealthy but rather a tax increase on well off working people. It would make it a less regressive tax. Would you rather go afer the super wealthy? We could keep the cap at $90K, and then put it back in for incomes over, say $200K? What do you think? re: Either that or just price inflation. Price inflation is understated. But with the current budget and account deficits, I'm not at all sure that price inflation won't top wage inflation in the coming years. It might break the system, better to go with the average, even though it is a "historical" cut in benefits. re: And raise the cap? You really do want to raise taxes don't you. I might accept raising the cap in return for a lowering of rates. Lowering taxes is what's got us into this mess. We need to put the country back on a sound fiscal basis. You have to recognize what's happening in the financial markets, right? You have to see how vulnerable we are. John