Despite repeated attacks by Republicans, the social safety net remains only damaged but not destroyed. Republican attempts to gut Social Security continue. The attempt to "privatize" Social Security (i.e. make all that money available to Wall Street and the stock market) keeps coming back to threaten the stability and viability of this program. However, simply cutting Social Security benefits (instead of increasing them as should be done) seems to be the avenue of Republican attack most likely to succeed. It is an approach that's being pushed by most Republicans and a few corporatist Democrats.
A wiser economic approach to making sure Social Security will never "go broke" would be to simply remove the income ceiling above which Social Security taxes are not paid. Why should almost all workers be taxed at over 13% to fund social security, while those making a million a year are paying closer to 1% and those making 10 million dollars a year are taxed at around 1/10th of 1% on their income?
Social Security surpluses were "borrowed" by the federal government so they could fund annual deficits created by cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, cutting taxes on corporations by huge margins, and nearly eliminating taxes on imports. Therefore it is only fair that corporations, wealthy Americans and foreign exporters selling in the American market pay higher taxes to compensate for these previous decades of "borrowing," since they reaped the benefits of all that "borrowing."
Conventional economic policy says that government should run surpluses in good economic times and deficits during economic downturns. This helps reduce the severity of economic cycles. Under the Republican presidencies of Reagan and both Bushes, however, we did exactly the opposite, and thereby created both the current downturn and the debt crisis. The vast majority of our total national debt was created under these three conservative Republican presidents.
In the service of their masters
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
10
6
6
