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Politics : Social Security on the chopping block -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (9)	6/13/2005 7:00:52 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 35

it isn't tough to raise fica from .0751 to .0851 for both the employee and employer. It also isn't tough to remove the cap on income. All the way. If you work and earn, you pay. Then, means test payments to cap them at a reasonable level, so millionaires will get back less than they put in. If you are making several mil as a jock or actor or CEO or prez, you shouldn't need a lot of SS in yer old age. Bring in the state and local employees not now under SS. They did it with federal employees while I was at the VA, in the '80's. And all those robots in factories, replacing workers? Tax the employer, either yearly, or when the bot is purchased. Every bot replaces several workers, eliminating small contributions from those workers and the large cumulative one from The Man. It's time to start fucking the corporations, for a change. But, to paraphrase Bill Spaceman Lee,"I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out."( or if I don't get my SS check) And I wouldn't be me if I didn't put in a claim for the first double digit grub :-)

To: 10K a day who wrote (9)	6/13/2005 11:31:45 AM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 35

RE: "it isn't tough to raise fica from .0751 to .0851 for both the employee and employer" The common misconception is the employer pays any part of your Social Security taxes. Your employer's overhead directly affects what your employer is able to pay you. If your gross income is currently $30,000 per year, your employer is paying $2,250 in FICA taxes that would otherwise be included in your pay check and you are paying another $2,250, for a total of $4,500. You will also pay $4,300 in income taxes, for a total of $8,800. If you live in a median priced home, you will pay another $2,200 in property taxes, for a total of $11,000. Even if you can't afford to own your own home, this bite will be taken out of your rent in your landlords cost to do business with you. You will also pay another approximately $2,000 in State sales tax, income tax, or a combination of the two, which brings your total taxes up to $13,000, out of your gross $32,250. At this point, your total taxes paid is 40% of your income. The first 2 days of every 5 you work goes directly to your State and Federal government, and your spendable income is about $20K per year. The only problem is that every purchase you make, with what you have left over, includes the tax obligations and overhead of every single company you do business with. Those businesses are also paying property taxes, income taxes, B&O taxes, etc. to make the products and services you purchase available to you. A very conservative estimate would be 15% of your spendable $20K goes toward those costs, or another $3,000. For things like gasoline, or any of the so called "sin taxes", the percentage is much higher, but I think 15% is close enough for ballpark figuring. So, out of a gross income of $32,250, $16,000 goes toward taxes, or a full 50%. For the 52 weeks out of a year you work, 26 of those weeks you work to pay the government. If you raise FICA another 2%, or $645, that adds a little over a week to the tax hours you work each year. Things are already tough. Adding another 2% is the wrong answer. The correct answer is to put our government on a strict money diet, and hold our elected representatives directly accountable for their actions and spending while serving in their representative capacities