Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stevefoder who wrote (239425)	2/20/2008 8:46:39 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 794396

The "call a spade a spade" fact here is that taxes are taxes and spending is spending. It can be argued about whether payroll taxation is a good, useful, efficient, fair, etc. form of taxation, but it is no less taxation than income taxes or sales taxes. Personally I don't think the idea of a massive government program trying to fund the retirement (or at least a fairly minimal retirement) for everyone is a good idea. People should be responsible for their own retirement, and then if the country decides they think its good and just to do so the government could help out those in extreme poverty. But in addition to any argument about "contributions", the government led people to expect for decades, that they would get all this retirement money, and also there is the politics of the issue (maybe you could tinker with SS, but try to cancel it and your political career is killed instantly). So ending the program is probably impossible, and ending it suddenly is probably not a good idea even if it was possible (and in this context taking a few years would still be "suddenly"). I'd rather it was never started, but I wouldn't really call for it to be ended now. The transition is impossible. OTOH some changes are probably needed, Social Security (and esp. Social Security combined with Medicare) are a huge fiscal problem going forward. There is going to have to be some change, whether its lowering pay outs, taxing payouts to a greater extent, increasing retirement ages, or some combination, something is going to have to be done.