Posted on 05/03/2015 5:37:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said at a town hall meeting the minimum wage should be raised to $15 per hour and advocated for expanding Social Security benefits.
If one person is making $18 million and another person is making $118,000 a year, who pays more into Social Security? Neither, theyre paying the same because there is a cap upon which after you, at a certain level, you dont pay anything more and that level is about $118,000, Sanders said at the meeting in Washington.
If you lift that cap, and you dont have to start at $119,000, you can start at $250,000. If you just do that, Social Security will be solvent until the year 2065 and we can increase benefits thats part of the legislation Ive recently introduced, he added.
Sanders, a member of the Senate Budget Committee and now a presidential candidate [2], said Social Security would be solvent for another 20 years if the U.S. had the same distribution of wealth today as it did 30 years ago.
Just because more people would be paying into the Social Security trust fund, he said. The major issue is how we deal with the multi-trillion dollar shift of wealth that has disappeared from working families and gone to the top one tenth of one percent, and if we can redistribute that down we will solve many problems.
Over the last 30 years, Sanders said, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in the wrong direction.
Our job is to turn that around, he said.
Addressing his support for a $15 minimum wage, Sanders said, Im not going to say thats a perfect solution but it is the direction we should go.
The White House supports a $10.10 per hour minimum wage.
Sanders [3] told the town hall meeting he expects President Obama to raise the income threshold for overtime pay in the next few months.
Heres the deal: you work at McDonalds, you make $28,000 per year, youre a supervisor of two people flipping hamburgers. Being that supervisor and making more than $23,500, you are not eligible for time and a half so what we have asked the president to do is to raise that number to somewhere around $55,000, he said. I believe the president will do something like that in the next couple of months and that would put a lot of money into the pockets of a lot of people.
Sanders also said his $1 trillion infrastructure bill could help lower the 17 percent youth unemployment rate.
How do you get jobs for those kids? Well, one way to do it is I introduced a $1 trillion infrastructure rebuilding bill, which would create about 13 million jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges and water systems and waste water plants and levees and dams and airports, he said. Think about how America would look when we have people giving us a first-class infrastructure thats what we should be thinking about.
Sanders said the budget introduced by Senate Republicans would not balance the federal budget over 10 years.
When they talk about deficit spending, these guys are very selective, he said. Throwing people off of Medicaid, thats one way you can do it, thats what they believe.
Senate Democrats have criticized the budget proposal for repealing the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under Obamacare.
..”his $1 trillion infrastructure bill could help lower the 17 percent youth unemployment rate.”
why wasn’t this TURKEY the guest of honor at Al Sharpton’s “Thanksgiving” rally in NYC???
Mosquitos and ticks think blood is a free, unlimited resource.
Why not 6 quintillion and people will have work forever?
This is completely the wrong direction for America.
But I agree we need to focus now, on the economic redevelopment of America.
Not however by manipulating wages to artificially raise them. Instead the GOP needs to return the focus to American economic development, right here in the United States.
We have been de-industrializing America for so long, that there is nobody wanting to bring jobs back here.
But there will be.
GOP get in front of this. Get out in front, and demand America return jobs right here.
Then let the wages work themselves out. But GOP be for American jobs once again.
One of the many enemies inside the gates
Yes, let's invest in heavy equipment for our unemployed urban yoots. That should make it easier for them to destroy cities.
There is no "benefit" in the Ponzi scheme known as SS unless the government is taking nothing from you.
I promise you this....the socialist is not thinking of a commensurate increase in "benefits" if the "tax" is raised. He wants to give that money to those who are not working or he wants to give that money to people making low wages. That's the "benefit" he's thinking about.
Why bother? Just give everybody $1 million dollars and call it good.
A trillion dollars and it “could” work. What is guaranteed is that friends, Demonrats and socialist around the of will be enriched.
Sounds good on paper, Bernie, until the youts find out there’s actually work involved.
——theres actually work involved——
Is clearing the Everglades of the alien python species work?
Deport all illegal aliens will restore millions of job opportunities for American youth and young adults.
To make Social Security solvent we have to increase “contributions” well beyond the maximum benefit? Sounds more like a special income tax at that point.
A Connecticut state police detective I worked with once commented that “there is no entrance exam to a life of crime”. Apparently there isn’t one to a life in politics either.
Sanders is a stalking horse for the Hillary campaign serving to make her look more centrist. He’ll get out once the deed has been done and the check clears.
It's amazing how many people don't understand that concept...
Ergo...Capital creates jobs, not government handouts or subsidies
Only socialists believe that.
I wish that was true...
Yeah, cause it would create shovel jobs, or something?
Eliminate federal agencies, particularly those that are redundant to that of state agencies of the same function. Example:EPA, Education, IRS, BATF...so forth.
Place government lands for sale...and not to foreign interest/entities.
Require all persons that receive government assistance to perform a function to help society. Clean parks, roadways, attendants, graffiti cleanup, meals on wheels...whatever. Functions the government pays for now would be transferred to those on gubbamint assistance. No Mo free rides.
Oh, here is a good one. A buddy at work said..if you're caught rioting, looting, burning. Not only do you go to jail, you and your family lose all government assistance. All of them...All assistance.
Lower the corporate tax rate to 15% and give amnesty to dollars hidden overseas.
Immigration? 5 year moratorium on legal immigration. Create a guest worker program, register illegals who are here so we know who they are, do background checks. Illegal with a felony...immediately deported. No path to citizenship. You must apply and work for it just like everyone else.
Place a 30% fee on money transfers to foreign countries if you cannot prove you are legal or citizen. Require all guest workers carry minimum level of auto insurance. Issue tax ID #’s so they can pay taxes and stop sucking the juice from this country.
Also known as the Illegal Alien Construction Worker Full Employment Act of 2015.
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