Apply the FICA Tax to All Income Including Investment Income and Lower the Retirement Age

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Thursday, August 26, 2010 by This Can't Be Happening

Fighting Words on Social Security: Apply the FICA Tax to All Income Including Investment Income and Lower the Retirement Age

by Dave Lindorff

It's time for us progressives to stop playing defense on Social Security.

We've watched the retirement system suffer years of attacks by conservatives and by class traitors in the Democratic Party. We have seen the retirement age raised since 1983 from 65 to 67, and the cost-of-living calculation altered so that our benefits have declined in value over time, while the tax rate on working people has risen.

It's time to stop fighting rear-guard actions and to go on the offense.

Beginning next year, the Baby Boom generation born after 1945 is going to start retiring en masse. That means the size of the retiree portion of the population is about to double. Far from being a threat to the Social Security system though, as conservative critics falsely claim, this new wave or retirees will actually strengthen the system, because soon there will be a far larger voting population of retirees and pending retirees who will all have a vested interest in preserving and improving Social Security.

That is precisely why the Obama Administration, ever solicitous of the wishes of the corporate elite and Wall Street, together with bought-and-paid Republicans and treacherous Democrats in Congress, are attempting through the latest so-called Deficit Commission, to push through more cuts to weaken the Social Security system now, while they still can.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/26-7

Disband Cat Food Commission and send Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to the rat holes they came out of!

Social Security was the Democratic Party's greatest social program ever, and now we see people with D's behind their names in collusion with Republicans to gut this great legacy from the New Deal. They gutted the Constitution, so why not gut Social Security and Medicare!

[damntexdem]

1. Hell, just raising the limit on earned income would fully fund Social Security.

But eliminating the cap would be better.

And extending it to other income could help fund Medicare.

And it makes sense to lower the allowable retirement age for many.

[hedgehog]

2. It was one of Obama's proposals during the campaign to eliminate the cap.

People who make under, say $250,000 but still above the current cap yelled about that, so the plan was to exempt them from the increase. I don't know what happened after that.

[DrDan]

3. no way - earned income only . . . don't get greedy

[Chemical Bill]

5. Sure, penalize people who work. n/t

[The Magistrate]

6. No, Doctor: Investment Income

It is simply ridiculous wages, pay that people labor for, is taxed at higher rates than income derived from clipping coupons.

[dkf]

4. Do you get to deduct your losses?