Social Security - Monday Morning Drive-By

I wanted to share this comment to an article on a new bill being submitted to change the social security withholding cap on income in order for the weatlhy to pay more into the system. The comment talks a bit about the history of Social Security contributions; how originallly all income was subject to the tax and that their was no distinction between 'earned' and 'unearned' (and not subject to Social Security) income.

I'll start with the intro to the article:

www.commondreams.org...

Today is Social Security's 79th birthday, a good time to celebrate the nation's most effective anti-poverty program, which, especially after the housing crash and Great Recession, is crucial to the retirement security of middle- and working-class Americans.

and now the relevant comment:

When Social Security started unearned income was treated the same as earned income and was taxed at the same rate. One of the major factors in dismantling the New Deal was redefining and separating incomes and changing rates of taxation under the false argument that it created jobs.

Another way of funding Social Security would be to put a Social Security tax on robots and business computers. That technology has taken more jobs than offshoring and thus reduced the revenues for FICA and Medicare. It would be fair and make sense to increase the cost of automation to the employers, thus damping their desire to replace workers with machines. You remember when ATM were introduced their use was free because it "reduced labor costs". Once everybody became addicted to using them and had stopped planning their banking needs ahead the banks started charging for them. Ain't Capitalism great?

Another way to fund Social Security is from the general fund just like the military. That possibility was anticipated when the Social Security Act was enacted. In fact it was military spending that led to the inclusion of FICA revenues into the general fund calculations. Johnson wanted to hide the expense of Vietnam so with the help of Congress included the FICA revenues which were in surplus every year to obscure the deficits of the war.

Reagan to hide the effect of his earned and unearned income tax cuts, doubled FICA taxes. He was responsible for the largest tax increase on working Americans ever and somehow he is lionized. Another example of the 1% hoodwinking the 99%.

The primary point I take from this is that the 1% did, and continues to, 'hookwink' the 99%. I've always wondered about this voting and arguing against your own best interest. It seems to be denial at it's worse this thinking (and I know plenty of people who think/believe this way) that if you talk like a wealthy person and vote like a wealthy person someday you'll be a wealthy person. The only reason for people supporting these policies that fleece the working majority to subsidize (think welfare) big business and the obscenely wealthy.

Unfortunatly, I'm off for a long day and don't think I'll have any time to comment or respond to comments, please pardon me. I don't think this will be of interest to many - but wanted to share it with those who might find it of interest.

Happy Week All.

a reply to: FyreByrd

Isn't stealing money from Social Security how Clinton left office with a "balanced" budget?

Robotics has taken a lot of jobs away, and the actual savings of this technology is little when you figure in all factors. Working people can buy your products. The free trade agreement was the problem, allowing substandard paying jobs in other countries with less safety in the job place to flourish. It also caused a lot more pollution worldwide because of the lack of environmental laws in these countries. Even in these countries, robotics is taking away these low paying jobs and their people are starving.

I agree, tax the robotics to cover the cost of lost jobs. Tax companies use of computers that replace human jobs.

originally posted by: rickymouse
Robotics has taken a lot of jobs away, and the actual savings of this technology is little when you figure in all factors. Working people can buy your products. The free trade agreement was the problem, allowing substandard paying jobs in other countries with less safety in the job place to flourish. It also caused a lot more pollution worldwide because of the lack of environmental laws in these countries. Even in these countries, robotics is taking away these low paying jobs and their people are starving.

I agree, tax the robotics to cover the cost of lost jobs. Tax companies use of computers that replace human jobs.

You know, I agree. Supposedly, using robotics was supposed to be cheaper then 'labor' but I wonder about it. I'd love to see an honest long-term cost/benefit analysis. I do know that the money goes into Big Money (few hands) rather then into the many hands of workers but I suspect over time the acquisition costs, maintenance, constant upgrades and replacement costs probably add up to more but I've never seen it addressed.

I got a bit off - hurray.

a reply to: FyreByrd

The Economy works by people getting paid to do a job and these people spend their money to support jobs for other people. We are supposed to be making most of the things we sell. But this isn't the case, instead of creating jobs we are creating computers to take these jobs away and still outsourcing all the services and manufacturing to other countries. I bet China has more of our money than the regular people in this country have. We may own things, but we really do not own it, the banks own most everything legally in this country.

Look at all the land the feds and states own, look at the loan guarantees that the government makes. They use this to figure in assets, so we don't look like we are so far in the hole. Yet even with that collateral, we are still deep in debt. Nobody pays taxes on this land, so they raise everyone's property taxes to make up for the loss.

The government is a corporation, a business of a sort. We, the consumer of their services pay for everything. Now communities everywhere apply for federal match funds to do things they do not really need. This leads to a raising of taxes everywhere. One percent of the people in this country, the leaders of communities, are spending a real lot of money, they don't want to tell their people of their communities that something isn't cost effective, instead they try to promote government spending to build the businesses in their communities. That isn't a problem if there is a real need for what they are applying for, but half the time they are not needed.

So what has this got to do with robotics? Well if there were more people working in factory or production jobs then we would have a more stable economy. Everything would go better. Computers do not save most companies money, the cost of the programs are huge, and they need to be upgraded often at high costs. Also these programs are plagued with flaws and need patches or additional paperwork to be created to cover this. Look at the few medical clinics that just got over 4 billion from the medicare scam they were running, there was no person there to say, how can a little clinic be doing three quarters of a billion in medical work in a year? Computers can't do that. Now this brings up the cost to the taxpayer of medicare. These were just a few that got caught, how many smaller ones slipped through the cracks.

..they get touchy if we **** with the 'money'

a reply to: rickymouse

I believe it was Frank Zappa who said, "The government is the entertainment wing of the military industrial complex".

Smart man.