A Spanking New Government Website!
To enlighten us all about the wonderful things that the administration has in store for Social Security. Here is a taste of what the website has on offer:
* We must not jeopardize our economic strength by raising payroll taxes – higher taxes would slow economic growth.
o Increasing payroll taxes is a band-aid, not a permanent solution. Payroll taxes have been increased more than 20 times since 1935, and we still have not fixed the problem. The Social Security payroll tax, which was once 2%, is now 12.4%. To meet the needs of the 21st century, payroll taxes would have to be raised over and over and over again on American workers, stifling economic growth and job creation. Economists calculate that under the current system, the payroll tax would have to rise to more than 18% if our children and grandchildren are to receive their scheduled benefits. (2004 Report of the Social Security Trustees, p. 165).
“Economists calculate that under the current system, the payroll tax would have to rise to more than 18% if our children and grandchildren are to receive their scheduled benefits. (2004 Report of the Social Security Trustees, p. 165).” But the current system stops taxing extra income once the individual’s annual income reaches 90,000 dollars. If we remove this limitation we don’t have to raise the payroll tax percentage by that much or perhaps not at all. And economists agree that raising taxes on the wealthy is unlikely to have much of a negative effect on economic growth.
What is this website doing, exactly? It doesn’t seem to provide neutral information on Social Security. Listen to this bit:
*And, we should make Social Security a better deal for younger workers through voluntary personal retirement accounts.
Funny, I see nothing on the website about how higher yields on private retirement accounts are linked to higher investment risks or about the very high transactions costs associated to private accounts. - It seems that this website is for propaganda. Who is paying for it, I wonder? Could it be me and other taxpayers?
March 12th, 2005 at 5:35 am
How can they get away with continuing to do this stuff? Besides, can Bush really be as moronic as he’s starting to appear in this snakeoil sales pitch marathon?
There doesn’t seem to be a single committee in Congress with enough integrity left, or a single major news network with enough backbone, to defraud these claims and inform the public that they’re being lied to.
I guess that’s part of the Republican, “You can’t trust government” strategy. They undermine the credibility of government — the people’s government — and then they can 1) use government as a partisan weapon while 2) controlling public discourse through propaganda.
The public already either 1) things government is corrupt anyway and doesn’t expect anything different, or 2) hears so much neocon spin they can’t tell what’s really happening.
It would be a hell of a lot cheaper to just tell everybody the truth and let us make up our own minds!
March 12th, 2005 at 10:18 am
I, for one, welcome our corporate overlords and am ready to assist them in rape and plunder. I mean, if it pays well.
March 12th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Would it be bad form to mention that 70 years ago, when people paid 2% of their wages to Social Security, people were digging ditches with shovels? In short, that people are far more productive and are far more able to pay a higher percentage of their increasing income to support a larger number of retirees? And that, if we stopped seeing these productivity increases, the stock market, on which these “personal account” schemes depend, would absolutely tank? Yes, it’s probably bad form to mention that.