… but still gets it wrong
But the worst aspect of the payroll tax holiday is that it erodes Social Security’s standing as a unique government program with its own revenue stream, a tax dedicated to its upkeep alone. Melding its own revenue with that of the federal government at large chips away at its standing, facilitating no one’s goals except those who want to see the edifice pulled down.
The more the program has to rely on general income tax revenue, the shakier becomes its claim to being a special case among government expenditures. When program-slashers sharpen their axes in Washington, the line has always been drawn at Social Security because it’s funded by a source distinct from the income tax.
If it becomes just another line item in the federal budget, what’s to save it being swept up in an across-the-board orgy of spending reductions? Hey, we’re taking a few billion out of defense, a few billion out of highway construction, a few billion out of benefits for the elderly and disabled — that’s fair, isn’t it?
What makes Michael Hiltzik think reducing SocSec to a fed budget line item by the current Obama/Democrat demogoguery is a bug rather than a feature?
And it is not, contrary to what Hiltzik writes, in a column riddled with error and assertions, about being able to “cut” SocSec willy-nilly.
The Leftist push to ever Bigger Government, who knows better how to run your life than you, is looking to create yet another welfare-dependent group. This time it is vacuuming up all workers who, by one reason or another, are looking to receiving SocSec upon retirement. Obama and Democrats are baldly reversing decades of touting SocSec as a pension plan that individuals contribute 15% of their income (what your employer puts in is money that would have gone into your wages/salary) over a lifetime of working, into just another welfare program they can both tinker with and make people feel guilty about. Most conscientious individuals are not looking for a free lunch; they only want to receive what they earned. The quickest way to shut down any SocSec critics is for Leftists to shout “HYPOCRITE!” against critics who are (or who have family members) receiving SocSec.
Independent citizens are a threat to statists so compromising individual worth and demeaning individual success (no one is really responsible for their success alone! We Own You!) is paramount.
Did you really think we want those laws observed? said Dr. Ferris. We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against… We’re after power and we mean it… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with. (‘Atlas Shrugged’ 1957)
Darleen, is there any chance you can delete my account so I can create a new one? I currently have two passwords, both of which allow me to post at PW under the same account. I suspect this is probably not a good thing.
Anyway, that Rand quote is priceless. It never ceases to amaze me at how much Rand got right in “Atlas Shrugged.”
Ayn Rand was a prophet, but of course she experienced the Soviet revolution first hand as a child so she saw how things could fall apart. If Mark Steyn got me depressed yesterday, this is making me want to go out and pelt an occupy camp with rotten eggs and fish heads… Yes it is part of a plan…
blake
if I delete you as a user all your comments go bye-bye
Darleen, OT, and apologies if this is already known, but I usually don’t have the chance to read here until some time after posts appear and some older non-Jeff posts (your 33566, 33582, 33641, 33663, 33684, 33714, 33716, 33718, and JHo’s 33586) have disappeared from the post chain. They’re visible from my RSS reader (Thunderbird), but get the ‘Oops’ page when I look at them now. Don’t know if this is tied into the site hack the other day, but thought you should know.
It’s simple: the Social Security payroll tax has a top income limit beyond which the worker is not taxed. As the revenue stream from that tax is diminished, and must be replaced by money from the general fund, it means that more of the income of the people who earn beyond the Social Security maximum goes into the fund. It is a back-door way of making the tax base for Social Security more “progressive.”
Of course, it had already been made more “progressive” by using it to help finance the federal deficit. Money is lent to the general fund from excess Social Security revenues, but is paid back as Social Security receives scheduled interest payments and eventually redeems Treasury Bills, all from the general fund, and that means taxes on people above the maximum earnings threshold . . . along, of course, with money spent at WalMart, and then shipped to China, and then borrowed back again.
Darleen,
All of my comments being deleted is somewhat of a mixed blessing, I do believe.
I will just leave well enough alone, then.
Thanks.
Blake, go to the profile in one of your accounts and change the password to something you won’t even remember. :)
(Click the “Site Admin” link at top right, then “profile”)
“…orgy of spending reductions…”
Only a lover of Big Government could describe gov’t spending cuts as an ‘orgy’.
Even more incredible, we’re not really discussing any cuts. When a Washington politician says “cuts” what he really means is, at best, “a slightly lower rate of increase than we had previously planned.”
So, instead of boosting a line item by 10% this year, we’re gonna boost it by 5%, and yet, call that a 5% spending cut. Never mind we’re spending more money.
If progressivism is mad, what would its 10 Commandments look like?
Actually Brad, they’ll increase spending by 9% and call it a 10% cut because 9% is 90% of 10%.
You’re correct, McGehee.
I failed to be cynical enough!
Les, you nailed it. “An orgy of spending” is much more appropriate use of language than “an orgy of spending cuts”. Says it all about the liberal mind-set.
orgy is the 1st thing a progg thinks, next birth control
Orgy and birth control, orgy and birth control, can’t have one without the ot……….ther. Progressive revised lyrics.
would it be : racist,homophobe, sexists, islamophobe et al to return the fed. gov’t to 1989 status? gorbachev wants to know?
New PPP Michigan Republican primary poll pdf 265 pages, 250 of crosstabs.
my allan “fear” the sweater vest
link
fear the sweater vest.
helps to know where the bodies are.
Ron Paul used the ‘f’ word…
A shame he’s a nut re: foreign policy, because his observations are spotlight-on the D.C. Establishment.
Anybody else having trouble accessing the site with a mobile device? Seems my Opera browser running on my Android platform won’t work here using the ‘mobile’ setting; I have to switch to the ‘desktop’ mode, which isn’t all that great whilst in smartphone. The problem just cropped up Friday, after the site hack.
link
(Bolding added.)
The bold text has been untrue for most (if not all) of the time SocSec has been in existence.
Jdw, for some reason I think PW’s mobile theme got disabled but the code that detects mobile devices and redirects them to it is still in place.
I have three browsers on my rooted Kindle but only the default Silk browser gets past the code and gets the desktop version of the site. On my phone I’m SOL.
The rejoinder, Darleen, is that it is illegal NOT to pay your withholding. The money is taken from you under the penalty of prosecution.
That being said, I return to my earlier demand. Just give what I’ve already paid in and we’ll call it quits. No harm, no foul, no interest. Just return to me all the monies I’ve paid in so far.
See what they do with that.
If it weren’t for the traffic, revenue, and shouting-into-the-wilderness-ness of it all, it might be better to be a pariah. I have not followed this at all, as I still have a hard time believing this is what those assholes are spending their time on, so I’ll just say: yeah, we’re the problem.
As if it were the most natural, right thing in the world: first-among-equals. Where did that phrase come from again?
That is a severe violation of omerta: a sourced quote about Plouffe. Looks like the gloves are completely off between the two sides of the Chicago Coalition. It is a wedge that we need to exploit to win in the fall – pitting the regularly corrupt Dem political machines against the wild-eyed Progs. Say what you will about those old Machines, they knew they had to keep the host healthy.
“Anybody else having trouble accessing the site with a mobile device?”
No luck on my phone either, jdw.
How do you switch to desktop mode in Opera?