The GOP continues to say that Social Security is a ponzi scheme! That the money they're taking into Social Security now is being used to pay out to those who are retired. They fail to say that our government has had their greedy little fingers in the pot and borrowed from the Social Security fund for years.
Steve Jobs official salary is $1.00 per year but his stock options and stock owned in Apple equals $735B. Does that mean his total investment in FICA and MC equals 0.19 cents a year? And what about what he pays into Individual Income Tax? How much of his earnings on his $735B does he actually pay on? How many of the wealthy do this?
Let's take a look at who's paying into the Social Security program. Who pays the most and who pays the least.
If you're making $107K a year or less and your self-employed, you're paying both the employee side of SS and the Employer side of SS. So you're % is currently 11% (because of a 2% decrease in the employee side of the deduction) which is deducted from 100% of your salary, after that your share reduces as your earnings level rises. for example:
If you're making $250K a year you're paying 11% into SS up to $107K, you pay 0% on the other $143K of your earnings. So 107 x .11=11,770 paid in total for each year, so total expenditure for those making $250K is 4.74% of their total earnings, compared to those making $107K or less each year. This to me is a reverse progressive tax. Why is it that they can't raise the cap or remove it entirely? And to what extent do the wealthy actually pay into it?
No one pays into it from earnings on interest on savings, stocks, or from their private retirement accounts. Any earnings on non-payroll is exempt from being taxed either SS or Medicare. So how much do the very wealthy actually pay into this? More than likely less than .01% of their total income.
If we look at Steve Jobs for example is less than .000000000000259 of 1% of his total earnings. Now tell me is that fair? That's his total expenditure into both SS and Medicare. I know he's probably not using Medicare and has no need for Social Security, but it's the taxpayers who've bought his products that's made him his billions, why shouldn't he pay to help those same consumers who made him rich, continue to be able to consume his products in the future?
It's time we began to use common sense, rather than a political idealism to grow our economy. I'm sorry, but if reducing taxes to big business, corporations, etc. worked why did jobs leave during the Bush II Admin, when taxes were reduced to the highest income levels? And why, when taxes were higher during Clinton's last 4 year term was there job growth and a projected budget surplus of over $12B dollars? It's time we brought back the Clinton's PayGo rule, the Balanced Budget Agreement and the Clinton tax structure, and we began to invest in our infrastructure, create a WPA program for the long-term unemployed, like they did during the Depression. People could be repairing our roads, building out our broadband, repairing our older government buildings and so on and so forth. Let's do what we did during the depression, and get people back to work, once people have more money to spend, the business' will then be able to bring more jobs back.
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