Reverse Robin Hood

[howardroark]

Question: What programs steal from the poor, give to the rich, and are supported by every Democrat on the face of the Earth?

Answer: Social Security and Medicare.

"When you look at government policies, there's a massive transfer of wealth from the young and relatively poor members of society toward the old and relatively rich members of society," says Veronique de Rugy, a Reason magazine columnist and economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

[...]

As transfer payments to elderly Americans - irrespective of wealth or need - increase in absolute and relative terms, de Rugy argues that we should scrap entitlements and replace them instead with a "social safety net" that helps poor Americans of whatever age. "There's absolutely no reason to continue paying for lots of people who have accumulated wealth their entire lives," de Rugy tells Reason's Nick Gillespie.

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/18/why-geezers-are-the-true-enemy

[howardroark]

Households headed by people 65 or older have 47 times the wealth of households headed by people under 35. In addition, seniors have  much lower costs of living than the young.

But don't hold your breath. Crusader Barack Obama doesn't rail against these programs, but against those who would reform and shrink them. He doesn't care about helping the poor, but about buying votes.

In 1984, reports the Pew Research Center, households headed by people 65 or older had 10 times the wealth of households headed by people under 35. By 2005—before the Great Recession hit—the gap had increased to 22 times, and by 2009 it was 47 times. In 2010, 11 percent of households headed by people 65 or older were officially under the poverty line. For households headed by someone under 35 years of age, the figure was 22 percent. The last time younger households were less likely to be poor than elderly ones was back in 1983. Conditions for older Americans have improved remarkably since Social Security and Medicare were established.

That older households are wealthier than younger ones is not surprising, and it is no cause for concern in itself. Elderly Americans have had a lifetime to amass savings and assets and to earn money from interest and investments. By the time they reach 65, most Americans also have lower living expenses. The kids are out of the house, and the house is more likely to be paid off (or to cost less due to inflation). In their new book The Clash of Generations, economists Lawrence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns show the cost of living for households of different sizes and ages varies dramatically. The cost of living for a married couple with children ages 6 to 17 is at least twice the cost for a retired couple. And these numbers underestimate the gap between retirees and married parents since they don’t include expenses such as saving for college, orthodontic treatment, and vacation time.

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/23/generational-warfare

[howardroark]

The current Social Security system disadvantages blacks for reasons related to their historic mistreatment. Private accounts would go some way toward addressing this legacy of discrimination — as Democrats typically put it — but the supposed fiercest advocates of black interests are precisely the ones who will stand in the way.

There is a direct correlation between economic status and average life span. This means that blacks, who are disproportionately poor, partly for historic reasons, tend to have shorter life spans, especially black males. The average life expectancy of a black male is roughly 68.6. The retirement age of Social Security is set under current law to eventually rise to 67. You do the math — this cannot be a good deal.

According to Social Security expert David John of the Heritage Foundation, one-fifth of white males die between the ages of 50 and 70. But one-third of black males die between those ages. If you die before you reach the age of 62, you have no chance of collecting benefits, and if you die shortly thereafter, you will not recoup the payroll taxes you paid into the system.

Read more: http://old.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200501040926.asp

Phasing out Social Security and Medicare would allow people to save their own money for retirement - and pass that nest egg on to their posterity. This is the foundation for any kind of long term prosperity. Given this, I wonder if the Democrats' opposition to SS/Medicare reform is based on sheer idiocy or a diabolical urge to keep the poor down in order to stoke the flames of class warfare that fuel the Democrat divide-and-conquer electoral strategy.

[24KT]

Read more: http://old.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200501040926.asp

Phasing out Social Security and Medicare would allow people to save their own money for retirement - and pass that nest egg on to their posterity. This is the foundation for any kind of long term prosperity. Given this, I wonder if the Democrats' opposition to SS/Medicare reform is based on sheer idiocy or a diabolical urge to keep the poor down in order to stoke the flames of class warfare that fuel the Democrat divide-and-conquer electoral strategy.

However phasing out those programs would not provide the giant piggy bank that gets raided from time to time.

By keeping those programs in place, they maintain a little nest egg, that can easily be appropriated under NDAA.

With all your savings gone, you are then dependent upon whom... the government, ...and you will go along with whatever the government has in store for you. If you rob people of their wealth... the product of their labour, and exchange it for worthless fiat paper that you control, you control their money supply do you not?

"Give me control over a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes it's laws" - Mayer Rothschilds

Gold is the money of Kings & Queens
Silver is the money of Aristocracy
Barter is the money of peasants
Debt is the money of slaves

The US Dollar is created out of debt, ...and the country is run on debt, ...hence the United States Budget Dilemma.

Do NOT for a minute think that Social Security and Medicare don't play a huge role in the replenishment of federal coffers.

[howardroark]

Payroll taxes, which are supposed to fund Social Security and Medicare, apply only to the first $106,800 of income at a combined rate of 15.3%. This (obviously) is a huge tax on everyone earning less than $106,800 - much larger than income taxes.

According to the Tax Foundation:

For households in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale, the average payroll tax burden per household for tax year 2004 was $917, while the average federal income tax burden per household (excluding refundable portion of EITC) was $171.

For the middle income group, the average payroll taxes paid per household was nearly double the average federal income tax.

For the bottom 40 percent of households, property taxes, payroll taxes, and state/local general sales taxes was each a larger hit on households than the federal individual income tax.

So phasing out Social Security and Medicare while simultaneously phasing out the payroll taxes that fund them would constitute a HUGE tax cut for the middle class.

Here is a graph from the Tax Foundation showing the distribution of payroll taxes:

[howardroark]

Half of payroll taxes are levied on employers. Obviously, the net result is a reduction in take-home pay:


According to the Cato Institute:

Today an average manufacturing worker costs his employer $14.89 an hour (not including fringe benefits). But the employee's take-home pay is only $10.79 an hour. The government takes $4.10 per hour in taxes--federal and state income taxes, payroll taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and workers' compensation--thus reducing the worker's take-home pay by 28 percent. Or to put it another way, abolishing income and employment taxes would raise the manufacturing worker's take-home pay by about $4.00 an hour. For a worker earning $60,000 a year and living in a state with average taxes, the government's share rises to 36 percent. That counts only the employment-related taxes that come directly out of the worker's paycheck or are paid by the employer on the worker's behalf. Workers still must pay a host of other taxes with their remaining take-home pay. The overall federal, state, and local tax burden is now at an all-time high.