Social Security a simple solution.

With the recent grumblings of the Congressional GOP to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits left and right and the restoration of our Social Security deduction in our paychecks, I came across a fact that I was totally unaware of. 

The payroll tax that funds Social Security only comes out of the first $113,000 of income.  People earning more than $113,000 annually do not have to pay anything additional for Social Security.  All the government would have to do would be to extend the tax to apply to all income levels including those well beyond $113,000 and we wouldn't have to talk about cuts or Social Security running out of money after all the Baby Boomers retire. Unbelievable!

The wealthiest Americans have shown once again that they do not care about the common good.  For them common is bad and only rich is good.  They do not want to pick-up the bill for Social Security or anything else for that matter.  They would rather see the elderly poor and homeless. 

The fact there is not politician one getting behind extending the Social Security tax to all income levels is very disturbing to me.  It shows that both the Democrats and Republicans are merely puppets of the wealthy.

Already I have seen corporate controlled media blaming recent reportedly sluggish retail sales on the restoration of the Social Security payroll tax.  They are quick to point the finger at higher taxes causing problems, but always manage to fail to show how higher taxes particularly on the wealthy would create solutions.  Taxing the wealthy to pay for Social Security to would be a great solution to a looming problem.

The so called "fiscal cliff deal" and the connection between higher taxes on the rich and lower unemployment.

Well, they made a deal, but I am not sure of all of the ramifications.  I think it would have been better to go off the "fiscal cliff' instead of taking the miserable deal that President Obama agreed on.

Taxes will increase on people making over $400,000 and everyone will have to pay social security tax on the first $113,000 they earn every year. 

I heard a lot of rich people belly-aching that increase taxes on them will prevent them from creating jobs (perhaps in China, as we all know they are not creating any here). 

This is in spite of the fact that traditionally as taxes go up on the wealthy unemployment goes down.  While economists have not been able to find a logical correlation for this it still has happened historically.  I have a theory,  I think when the wealthy start getting extra-taxes dumped on them, they create jobs in order to have the tax burden shifted off of them and back on to the middle-class and poor. 

If my theory is correct and the increased taxes on people making over $400,000 a year is sustained, I think we could see unemployment drop within the next year or two.

I think things would have been even better if they had raised taxes on people making over $250,000 per year as originally proposed.  Unless you live in California or the Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic United States, $250,000 per year is a lot of money.  In any other place in the United States you would really be considered rich, because your cost of living is so low.

We will see how things will go with this deal, but frankly, I'm not very optimistic. 

Tax caps spell a slow death for government services

I heard NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg at a press conference once say something like "Everyone wants great service [from their city government] but no one wants to pay for it. "

This must be true for the the proponents of tax caps, who want to put the slow kill on local government spending. A much better course of action would be for municipalities to post their incoming revenue and budgets on the Internet therefore citizens can see where money is being spent, and make sure that waste and abuse by officials are kept under control. But of course politicians would rather push tax caps because they probably have something to hide.

Tax caps are big in Massachusetts. They limit the amount of property and school taxes a municipality can impose. As a result of tax caps, Massachusetts schools and public services like libraries, police, firefighters, public works and recreation programs are slowly being shrunk into nothing.

Some tax caps are set below the Consumer Price Index and therefore the municipality cannot even attempt to keep up with inflation and services must be cut.

What surprises me is that this trend appears to the worst in the most affluent and educated communities. Massachusetts is the state that spawned the Kennedys for goodness sake, I always thought it was full of liberal intellectuals not right-wing yahoos. Newton, MA, a very wealthy suburb of Boston, recently cut city services through tax caps. This included closing four branch libraries. The branch libraries eventually re-opened staffed solely by volunteers. Soon they will need volunteer police and sanitation workers. I'm assuming they already have volunteer firefighters, but usually wealthy people are more concerned with making sure there mansions are safe from the threat of fire than they are with any other type of municipal services, so I bet the firefighters are still paid.

This trend will continue throughout the country as jobs continue to move off shore, and the rich being the only ones with money refuse to pick up the tab through taxation. If someone in your community starts the rally for tax caps it would be a good idea to counter attack buy starting a movement to make your local government's budget available online so everyone can see where the money goes, and then help local politicians make a decision as to what services need to be cut or if there is really a need to raise taxes.

Tax payers should have the right to see exactly how their tax dollars are being spent.

I think anti-government people think government officials squander their tax dollars on personal matters among other things. They are afraid of government corruption. There is no doubt that government corruption does exist, but perhaps not on the level that the right wing yahoos think or say there is.

One way to combat this is to give the tax payers an open window on where their tax dollars are being spent by using the Internet. All federal, state, and local government agencies should be required publish their budgets on the World Wide Web in an easy to follow format, and perhaps with a more detailed spread sheets that accountant watchdogs can scrutinize. Tax payers should have the right to trace where there tax dollars go, and the Internet can make this all possible.

I'm surprised that no one is demanding this, at least not loudly enough for me to have heard about it. [Actually there was an act passed by Congress to sort of allows for budget posting on the web, but I don't think it has been very effective] I am sure there are many politicians who don't want this. Perhaps they fear that certain projects would never get funded if the public knew how much they cost, or perhaps the right wing yahoos are right and they are doing illicit things with our money.

Obama may not increase taxes on the rich.

President-Elect Obama's administration is already planning an economic stimulus package that will give the middle class additional tax cuts and leave the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans alone through 2010.

Why do people still think that trickle-down economics theory works? If you let wealthy people hang on to their money that's exactly what they will do. They hoard it, that's what they love to do. They won't spend it, and it definitely won't trickle down to the poor and middle class.

I think the government should start taxing wealthy individuals' net worth, that's all the assets that you have after you factor in your liabilities. And how much money do you think you need to live comfortably? I think the government should start adding on taxes on individuals with a net worth of over 5 million dollars. Income tax just taxes what we make each year
While we're at it, let's make it illegal for Americans to keep money offshore. This is how rich people avoid paying taxes on interest.

Also there is controversy over raising corporate taxes in such bad economic times. I think corporations have to be given breaks only when they show that they are creating jobs for Americans and not cutting them. There should also be tax penalties for companies that have CEOs and other high-ranking employees that make an inappropriately large salary as compared to other employees of their company. Let's force corporate America to spread the wealth around within their own ranks.