I'll just demolish the main points of what you think are rebuttals.
Your first point is that because we can't meet current or future obligations, it follows logically that we should pay even less. In a word: duh.
You second point -- I guess, if you have one -- is that you define a program in which people pay for only their own insurance, and not even all of that must be called a tax because the premium is inadequate to meet the obligation. Bzzzt. 100% WRONG, again. It doesn't make it any less of an insurance program just because it's insolvent. It makes it a badly run insurance program, that's all.
Your implicit belief, that we shouldn't pay our insurance premiums into these programs because they can't meet their obligations and are going to be cut is pure NONSENSE. These programs ARE NOT going to be cut. We are simply going to monetize away the outstanding debt. In that event -- which we agree is inevitable -- the less of that which has to be done, the better. And the best way to minimize the impact of a badly run program that won't disappear is to at least continue to force people to make some payments on the obligations they'll be requiring politicians to pretend they're meeting by printing play money.
These programs AREN'T GOING TO BE CUT. EVER. Not nominally. So suck it up. It's reality.
You next make the incredibly silly statement: "It relies on borrowing to pay current claims, as the taxes no longer cover the programs."
You mean the "taxes" that deadbeats like you insist on not paying? I'm paying 15.3% up to the top, and I get lectures from deadbeats. OY Vey.
Lower income has always paid the income tax.
False. The EITC was enacted while Ford was President. Bush increased the EITC from 10% to 14%. Before the EITC there were zero brackets, I know, because as a student from 1970-1979 in college and graduate school, I filed, but paid ZERO income tax until my stipend reached $7500, in 1977. That is, I paid no tax for the first six years of the decade -- all before the EITC. Furthermore, I paid an effective tax rate of LESS than zero for 1977, 1978, and 1979, because in 1980, my income increased by over 1000% and I was able to average those years. So please. I wasn't born yesterday.
but historically you are incorrect suggesting that income taxes can't be collected from lower income. It was from the word go.
Who said they can't be? They're collected by States and Municipalities all over the country.
But here, we're talking about Federal taxes, and please don't insult both of our intelligence by pretending that a country that was willing to put up 1% on incomes up to (inflation adjusted) $455,000 in 1913 bears any resemblance to the country we live in today. That country is gone forever, and like the fantasy you have that politicians are going to (visibly) cut Social Security, the fantasy you have that low income people will be paying Federal Income tax -- ever again -- is one you need to get over. We're way past the day when ANY politician will propose that low income people should pay their fare share of taxes. Hell, you don't even think they should pay their fair share of what you describe as "welfare programs" which benefit them directly.
People don't pay 'their own insurance' in these programs. The government does not collect premiums, invest in income generating assets, and then pay claims from those assets (that would have been rational, but I have plenty of reason to doubt their efficacy in carrying it out). That's what insurance does. The government simply collects taxes and directly transfers those taxes to the welfare recipients as defined by the law (by age, disability, etc.) That is not 'insurance', it is welfare. Why carry water for the Left's propagandists and call a tail a leg?
Your implicit belief, that we shouldn't pay our insurance premiums into these programs because they can't meet their obligations and are going to be cut is pure NONSENSE. These programs ARE NOT going to be cut. We are simply going to monetize away the outstanding debt. In that event -- which we agree is inevitable -- the less of that which has to be done, the better.
I disagree with your conclusion, and I'll explain why: I can more easily protect my earnings against inflation than I can the payroll tax collection.
Google: gunslingr3 greenspan
Your first result will be a post on this forum in 2005, by me, citing the future to come: "We can guarantee cash payments from here on out, what we cannot guarantee is the purchasing power of that cash." -Alan Greenspan during remarks on Social Security, Feb 16, 2005
Since 1998 I've been protecting my purchasing power because I expect that the politicians will take the easiest course, and let the Fed print to meet the scheduled welfare payments. The more of my earnings the government takes, the less I can hedge against their profligacy.
You next make the incredibly silly statement: "It relies on borrowing to pay current claims, as the taxes no longer cover the programs."
Whether or not you consider it silly, it is the reality. Since 2010 the programs are in the red (combination of losing over 6 million payrolls in this recession and a jump in those moving onto those welfare rolls). This even before the recent cut in the payroll tax rate, which merely exacerbated this phenomena.
You mean the "taxes" that deadbeats like you insist on not paying? I'm paying 15.3% up to the top, and I get lectures from deadbeats.
No need for scare quotes, the Supreme Court clarified in Flemming v Nestor that these collections are taxes, and confer no property right to the taxpayer. We're at the mercy of the Congress.
Born as I was in 1975, with the payroll tax rates I will pay during my lifetime and current benefit schedule in law, I will not get back even a dollar for each dollar I paid in. The deadbeats are actually the generations since inception that collected payouts well in excess of what they paid in taxes, and left future generations the debt.
Jagadeesh Gokhale, senior economic adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, professor of Economics at Boston University document the looming Social Security and Medicare crises in "Is War Between Generations Inevitable?" They report that "A male reaching 65 years of age today (in 2000, the year of their study) can expect to receive $71,000 more in government 'transfer' benefits (of all kinds at both the federal and state levels, but mainly from Social Security and Medicare) than he will pay in taxes (of all kinds at both the federal and state levels) before he dies. A 65-year-old female can expect a net gain of more than twice that amount; she can expect $163,000 more in benefits than she will pay in taxes."
The picture is not so rosy for people who entered the labor force in 2000. They will pay far more in taxes than they will receive from transfer programs. Expansion of elderly handouts, such as prescription drugs, will make things worse. "For example: A 20-year-old female can expect to pay $92,000 more in taxes than she will receive in transfer benefits over her lifetime. The future looks more than three times as bleak for her male cohort, who can expect to pay $312,000 more in taxes than he will ever receive in benefits." - Walter Williams
If you think increasing taxes will solve this, or even ameliorate the problems ahead, we must disagree.