If your employer takes money out of your paycheck and sets it aside for your retirement, that’s a retirement plan. If they take money out for your company medical plan, that’s medical insurance.
The government on a very basic level simply does the same. Call is welfare if you want, but the fact is billionaires qualify for social security also, along with medicare if they so choose.
It’s really a shame that we can’t discuss an issue like this because everyone talking defines things differently.
They don’t call Social Security the “Third Rail of Politics” for nothing.
I don’t want to distract from the main point of this thread, on which we agree: The candidate is right that the “middle class,” however you want to define it, does not pay anything that can reasonably be considered a “fair share” of federal income taxes.
However, I have to respond to your point because I don’t think we can really discuss Social Security or Medicare, or their relationship to the federal tax scheme, if we are misleading ourselves as to what these programs really are:
Social security taxes and Medicare taxes are income taxes, plain and simple. It says so right in the statute that imposes them: “In addition to other taxes, there is hereby imposed on the income of every individual a tax equal to 6.2 percent of wages..” 26 U.S.C. § 3101(a). “In addition to the tax imposed by the preceding subsection, there is hereby imposed on the income of every individual a tax equal to 1.45 percent of the wages...” 26 U.S.C. § 3101(b)(1).
These are taxes, not insurance premiums or savings. Social Security and Medicare are nothing like employee retirement or benefits plans. They are not “set aside,” they are used to fund benefits to current recipients, or for whatever Congress wants to use them for. You have contractual rights in the benefits of your 401k or pension plan, and an employer takes your 401k contribution and applies it to something else, you can sue your employer. As the Supreme Court held in Flemming v. Nestor over 60 years ago, you have no property rights at all in future Social Security benefits: If Congress applies your social security taxes to pay for a bridge to nowhere, or even decides to end social security benefits entirely, you have no recourse at all, other than to vote for a different Congressman.