Taxes and Spending Cuts - Obvious Solutions

[jwoodie]

Taxes: Forget about raising FIT rates; just eliminate the cap on Social Security contributions. This will effectively raise top income taxes by 5.2%. P.S. Let the ill-advised "temporary" SS tax cut expire. Everyone has to pay more taxes if we are serious about raising revenue.

Spending: Just suspend cost-of-living increases until the budget is balanced. This would put everyone on the same side of the table when trying to eliminate wasteful expenditures.

What say you?

 

[jwoodie]

That's a very good idea, jwoodie! On second thought, let's not talk about specifics: It's so much warmer and fuzzier to talk about compromise and moderation and leave the thinking to someone else...

 

[neomalthusian]

This has been brought up repeatedly as an obvious fiscal fix to the scheduled-to-deplete Trust Fund, which if coupled with a raise in the eligibility age to align with average life expectancy, would theoretically fix the SS funding problem forever.

I think the biggest drawback with the approach is that it inherently changes the nature/structure of Social Security, turning it into more of a welfare scheme than it was previously. It makes it harder to keep calling it "insurance." Real insurance isn't priced as a percentage of income, so while of course Social Security is not real insurance and has never been, this change would further reveal that it's not.

Over time, it would erode the public's support of the program, starting with those who contribute the most to it and working backwards.

 

[boedicca]

How about we just roll government spending back to 2008 levels? The economy has barely grown since then. There is no justification for the 25% plus increase in federal spending.

 

[Darkwind]

How about we just roll government spending back to 2008 levels? The economy has barely grown since then. There is no justification for the 25% plus increase in federal spending.

Holds pencil up and watches it drop....


Nope, nothing wrong with gravity.....

 

[Darkwind]

Taxes: Forget about raising FIT rates; just eliminate the cap on Social Security contributions. This will effectively raise top income taxes by 5.2%. P.S. Let the ill-advised "temporary" SS tax cut expire. Everyone has to pay more taxes if we are serious about raising revenue.

Spending: Just suspend cost-of-living increases until the budget is balanced. This would put everyone on the same side of the table when trying to eliminate wasteful expenditures.

What say you?

Won't work.

the money being put into SS is locked away. I mean, people only take out the money they put in............That is what I am told. Its My money, so don't touch it.


right?

 

[boedicca]

Taxes: Forget about raising FIT rates; just eliminate the cap on Social Security contributions. This will effectively raise top income taxes by 5.2%. P.S. Let the ill-advised "temporary" SS tax cut expire. Everyone has to pay more taxes if we are serious about raising revenue.

Spending: Just suspend cost-of-living increases until the budget is balanced. This would put everyone on the same side of the table when trying to eliminate wasteful expenditures.

What say you?

Won't work.

the money being put into SS is locked away. I mean, people only take out the money they put in............That is what I am told. Its My money, so don't touch it.


right?

Check your premises, bub.

"Your Money" has already been borrowed and spent by the government. It's gone. There is nada-nothing-rien. What the government has done is chained younger, poorer people to the yoke to pay off the IOUs.