Thursday, December 08, 2011

Payroll tax cut may not be much better than Bush Social Security plan

I benefit from the temporary cut in Social Security taxes that's been pushed by President Obama, but I worry about the integrity of the Social Security trust fund. Reducing the amount of revenue going into the trust fund was my biggest criticism of the Bush Social Security reform proposal of several years back. That plan called for cutting part of the Social Security tax so younger workers could put that money into private individual retirement accounts. Under that plan, the government would have to borrow money to keep up the level of Social Security benefits for current crop of retirees and older workers who would be "grad fathered in" to the old system. That was a long transition period and a lot of borrowing to make it work.

With that in mind, it's hard to justify a similar tax cut in Social Security to try and temporarily give more people spending money and prop up the economy.

That was the tax cut we got last year. The new plan is slightly better. It calls for a tax increase on millionaires to pay for the payroll tax cut. It's still probably not the best idea. Too much political posturing, even though I basically favor income redistribution concepts.

Yes, soak the wealthy pro football player bastards.

While I am troubled by all the tax cut posturing, I still support Obama. Still impressed with things like Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton and her recent speech before the UN; GLBT rights as human rights. Still good reasons to vote for Obama.

We get the same rebate posturing from Congress, both Republicans and Democrats.

It's throwing the masses candy for votes while bankrupting the system in the long run. Hard to say if these rebates actually help the economy and I'm also counting the corporate tax giveaways and tax breaks that the wealthy get. It's a rebate war between rich and poor. A one up mans ship.

Tax candy so we can all go out and buy more Chinese products and imported oil.

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