Archive for the ‘Social Security’ Category
A FAIRNESS QUIZ FOR OBAMA
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012- FEBRUARY 7, 2012
A Fairness Quiz for the President
Is it fair that some of Mr. Obama’s largest campaign contributors received federal loan guarantees?
By STEPHEN MOORE
President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria?
Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal income taxes, and the richest 10% pay two-thirds of the tax?
Is it fair that the richest 10% of Americans shoulder a higher share of their country’s income-tax burden than do the richest 10% in every other industrialized nation, including socialist Sweden?
Is it fair that American corporations pay the highest statutory corporate tax rate of all other industrialized nations but Japan, which cuts its rate on April 1?
Is it fair that President Obama sends his two daughters to elite private schools that are safer, better-run, and produce higher test scores than public schools in Washington, D.C.—but millions of other families across America are denied that free choice and forced to send their kids to rotten schools?
Is it fair that Americans who build a family business, hire workers, reinvest and save their money—paying a lifetime of federal, state and local taxes often climbing into the millions of dollars—must then pay an additional estate tax of 35% (and as much as 55% when the law changes next year) when they die, rather than passing that money onto their loved ones?
Associated Press (more…)
VIDEO – PAUL RYAN INTERVIEW ON CHRIS WALLACE
Monday, January 30th, 2012VIDEO – DEBT & DEFICITS
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
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CALLING OBAMA’S PAYROLL TAX BLUFF
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011- DECEMBER 16, 2011
Obama billed last year’s cut as a one-year holiday to boost the economy. Now preserving it is about fairness.
- By ARI FLEISCHER Mr. Fleischer, a former press secretary for President George W. Bush, is president of Ari Fleischer Communications.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Clearly, Mr. Obama can’t be trusted with the trust fund. As part of his re-election bid, he is so eager to win votes by handing out money that he is willing to undermine Social Security, while providing a temporary tax cut paid for by a permanent tax hike. Unlike the 2001 bipartisan, marginal income-tax rate cuts, the payroll-tax cut was sold in 2010 as a one-year tax “holiday” with the intention of boosting the economy. Now the president has changed his rhetoric and the cut is about “fairness” and giving middle-income Americans more money.
House Republicans on Tuesday passed a bill to extend a payroll-tax break and offset the revenue loss with spending cuts. President Obama immediately promised to veto the bill because Democrats prefer to pay for payroll-tax cuts with tax increases on the wealthy.
Neither approach gets to the root of the problem, but at least Republicans are cutting spending. The whole idea of having a dedicated payroll tax that supports a Social Security “trust fund” rests on the notion that you get what you pay for. A worker suffers payroll-tax deductions that the government is supposed to hold onto, separated from the rest of the budget, to fund a large portion of that worker’s Social Security and Medicare payments upon retirement. (more…)
WHY WE CAN’T EXCAPE THE EUROCRISIS
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011- NOVEMBER 2, 2011
EU and U.S. debt are interlinked through the banking system.
When is a bailout not a bailout? When the bailor is short of funds. The recently announced debt plan in the European Union comes up short in almost all respects.
The debt crisis is not just an EU problem, but a trans-Atlantic financial crisis. The overwhelming debt problems on either side of the pond are interlinked through the banking system.
First to the EU. The underlying dilemma is that governments have promised their citizens more social programs than can be financed with the tax revenue generated by the private sector. High tax rates choke off the economic growth needed to finance the promises. Economic activity gets driven into the underground economy, where it often escapes taxation.
Nowhere is this truer than in Greece, which has a long history of sovereign defaults in the 19th and 20th centuries. There is a bloated public sector, and competitive private enterprise is hobbled by regulation and government barriers to entry. Successive Greek governments ran chronic budget deficits, and the Greek banks lent to the government. Banks in other EU countries, such as France, lent to the Greek banks. (more…)
VIDEO – HERMAN CAIN SPEAKING AT THE FEDERATION OF REPUBLICN WOMEN’S CONVENTION IN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011PERRY IS R IGHT: THERE IS A TEXAS MODEL FOR FIXING SOCIAL SECURITY
Monday, September 26th, 2011- SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
Public employees in three Texas counties have benefited from an ‘Alternate Plan’ for 30 years.
Dallas
To highlight the problems facing Social Security, Texas Gov. and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry is pointing to three Texas counties that decades ago opted out of Social Security by creating personal retirement accounts. Now, 30 years on, county workers in those three jurisdictions retire with more money and have better death and disability supplemental benefits. And those three counties—unlike almost all others in the United States—face no long-term unfunded pension liabilities.
Since 1981 and 1982, workers in Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria Counties have seen their retirement savings grow every year, even during the Great Recession. The so-called Alternate Plan of these three counties doesn’t follow the traditional defined-benefit or defined-contribution model. Employee and employer contributions are actively managed by a financial planner—in this case, First Financial Benefits, Inc., of Houston, which originated the plan in 1980 and has managed it since its adoption. I call it a “banking model.”
As with Social Security, employees contribute 6.2% of their income, with the county matching the contribution (or, as in Galveston, providing a slightly larger share). Once the county makes its contribution, its financial obligation is done—that’s why there are no long-term unfunded liabilities.
Associated PressPresidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney spar Thursday night.
The contributions are pooled, like bank deposits, and top-rated financial institutions bid on the money. Those institutions guarantee an interest rate that won’t go below a base level and goes higher when the market does well. Over the last decade, the accounts have earned between 3.75% and 5.75% every year, with the average around 5%. The 1990s often saw even higher interest rates, of 6.5%-7%. When the market goes up, employees make more—and when the market goes down, employees still make something.
VIDEO – KRAUTHAMMER AND HANNITY -SOLYNDRA AND SOCIAL SECURITY
Sunday, September 18th, 2011KRAUTHAMMER – POSITIVELY PONZI
Saturday, September 17th, 2011Positively Ponzi
WASHINGTON The Great Social Security Debate, Proposition 1: Of course it’s a Ponzi scheme.
In a Ponzi scheme, the people who invest early get their money out with dividends. But these dividends don’t come from any profitable or productive activity – they consist entirely of money paid in by later participants.
This cannot go on forever because at some point there just aren’t enough new investors to support the earlier entrants. Word gets around that there are no profits, just money transferred from new to old. The merry-go-round stops, the scheme collapses and the investors lose everything.
Now, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program. A current beneficiary isn’t receiving the money she paid in years ago. That money is gone. It went to her parents’ Social Security check. The money in her check is coming from her son’s FICA tax today – i.e., her “investment” was paid out years ago to earlier entrants in the system and her current benefits are coming from the “investment” of the new entrants into the system. Pay-as-you-go is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. (more…)