Posted on 05/16/2013 8:34:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the aftermath of 9/11, many young, strong Americans enlisted, willingly agreeing to sacrifice their lives if necessary to protect our country’s interests. Today’s wealthiest Americans have the same opportunity to put their country’s interests before their own. Politicians should not shy away from asking them to put forth not their lives but what are, for them, their modest Social Security checks.
The philosophy of the investment management firm I founded 15 years ago focuses first on a company’s balance sheet and second on its income statement. This approach has served our clients well. The current debate over entitlement reform is incorrectly preoccupied with Americans’ income statements when their balance sheets should be the focus. Many in the top 2 percent of earners — those with annual income of $250,000 — reside in places with high costs of living and don’t feel particularly wealthy. They make a fair point. With the exception of select deductions that dramatically reduce the effective tax rates of wealthy households, income is fully taxed in today’s anemic economic climate. Net worth is a more reliable indicator of real wealth but is curiously absent from discussions of Social Security reform.
By Federal Reserve estimates, there is about $67 trillion of household wealth in the United States. According to the Congressional Research Service, 74 percent of this, or $50 trillion, is controlled by 10 percent of the population. Wealth is much more skewed than income. The top 1 percent own roughly 35 percent of the country’s wealth but only 17 percent of its income. My fear is not that we end up looking like Europe but rather that we look like the bifurcated societies of Latin America.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 1 percent of the United States’ 115 million households have a net worth of $6.8 million or greater.
The top 5 percent have a net worth of $1.9 million or greater.
If just the top 1 percent of wealthiest households gave up their Social Security income, assuming two-thirds of these households are of retirement age and will receive benefits averaging $30,000 a year, more than $200 billion would be saved in the first 10 years.
That would contribute greatly to resolving the projected funding gap. If Social Security is gradually phased out for the wealthiest 5 percent of households, beginning with just a 10 percent benefit reduction, the savings climbs to nearly $500 billion over 10 years.
Remember, wealthy households received a windfall of sorts with the recent changes to estate tax law, a tax pioneered by Republican Theodore Roosevelt, and continue to benefit from a discount of as much as 40 percent in calculating estate taxes when privately held businesses are passed on.
You are going to get flamed by Freepers who fail to read that this is HIS RECOMMENDATION, LOL!
Why should I contribute my money if I can’t get it back. It will no longer be a “retirement program” forced upon me by the government. It will be just another tax... (Spreading my wealth to Obama’s people)
Is that before or after we put the final nail in our collective coffin with legalizing 30 million illegal aliens?
Just do away with Social Security altogether and let us invest our own money.
Give me an option to opt out of Social Security and I would do it in a heartbeat. Otherwise don’t ask me to give up what I have been paying into for over 38 years at my current age of 54. Social Secuity has the ability to suck another 15 years of contribution from me.
Why should I if I am fortunate enouth to amass a net worth in the top 5% or even in the top 1% give up something that I was required to pay into for 53 years.
Again this is a socialist view of redistribution of wealth in America. Why should I not receive my benefit if I have paid into SS all my working days.
Also don’t F-ck with my 401k and try and steal that money from me too.
So social security is no long a trust fund for you when you retire - it is simply a new tax that they will give your money to others.
It depends greatly on what ‘they’ call rich.
In many instances, those ‘rich’ are probably involved in business affairs that generate much more than they would get via Social Security.
This is another sound-good-ism liberal idea that fails to consider the unintended consequences.
==
Soon, they will be coming for the savings accounts, after they determine the maximum amount each person should have. Those who save more than the determined amount will have to share their excess with those less fortunate or those who just didn’t know how to save or those who preferred to spend all their money instead of saving.
But, hey, it’s the idea that counts, and it looks good on paper. So what could go wrong?
Had they left SS alone, there would have been more $$$ available. All those people who contributed and died before 62 left their investment, it wasn’t like it went to their heirs. NOOO, they couldn’t do that, there was too much there that could be use for other project, so screw SS. Sorry, its the way I see it.
In other words, more theft.
if all the many thousands and thousands of newspaper employees were to “give up” their SSA pensions, it would also help the federal government have more money (to waste, or use to suppress Americans and our liberties, or use to arm our enemies in the MuslimBrotherhoods of the world, or use to train fish how to evade their predators, or use to teach Kenyans how to use condoms, or all sorts of wonderful things!)
Let’s confiscate the SSA accounts of the newspaper writers!
Let’s make a deal.
I’ll give up ALL FUTURE payments, forfeit all my prior SS contributions (tens of thousands) and my right to claim them, if you’ll just STOP taking my money for this Ponzi scheme NOW.
Those payments are made at the highest applicable rate.
Treasury should be returning the taxes on Social Security payments directly to the Social Security side of the ledger!
The clock to midnight keeps ticking down...it is not going to be much longer before the shooting starts.
First off, social security is already taxed if you hit a certain threshold of income, which is not much. So, not only are you getting taxed ON AN INSURANCE PAYOUT, this asshat now wants to begin to phase them out based on income too.
So, T Roosevelt figured we needed an estate tax, so what? Roosevelt also loved guns, any of these asshats mention that during discussions of gun control, of course not.
The federal government has long worked to prevent people from doing just that. That is, if you accept Social Security money *at all*, you are automatically enrolled in Medicare. And once in, you cannot easily get out.
Therefore, the way to get people off Medicare and Social Security is a several step process, done in such a way as to minimize the number of people harmed by the reform.
To start with, make a deal for older people still earning income from all taxable sources, that if they refuse to take either Social Security or Medicare, they can deduct slightly more from their taxable income.
This would mean saving more money than they are getting from the government. But if they need that money, they still can get it.
It also turns Medicare for them into something more like insurance, with a deductible, and savings for the money they do not spend on health care, thus encouraging them to shop around.
The next step is to expand the deal to those most of the way through to retirement. If they are still working, though, they can get deductions for their current year plus a previous year.
Then limit new entries into the SS system to just minimum wage earners with no other source of retirement. Everyone else is out of that system. This would slash the future size of SS by three quarters or more.
Everybody else gets IRAs.
The last piece of the puzzle is to make Medicaid entirely per capita block grants to states. With the provision that if they cheat to drive out their poor, their funding gets slashed.
“My fear is not that we end up looking like Europe but rather that we look like the bifurcated societies of Latin America.”........................................ Yeah, with no toilet paper too.
Because they put a gun to your head.
Duh.
Then the “wealthy” should not have to pay social security taxes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.