Supercommittee of the One Percent Won't Even Think of Taxing Wall Street

[Derechos]

If anyone still questioned who owns Washington, the Congressional supercommittee charged with reducing projected deficits by $1.2 trillion seems determined to end any doubts. According to press accounts, both the Republicans and Democrats on the committee support a plan to reduce average Social Security benefits by 3 percent.

While whacking our parents and grandparents with a big cut in Social Security benefits apparently draws bipartisan support, the supercommittee will not even score a plan to tax Wall Street financial speculation. No committee member from either party is prepared to make a simple request to the Joint Tax Committee of Congress that would allow a speculation tax to be one of the items considered in the mix.

It's hard to know which part of this picture is worse. The plan to cut Social Security benefits at a time when seniors are more dependent than ever on them is incredibly pernicious. The people who would see their benefits cuts under this proposal paid for their benefits contributing to Social Security over their entire working career.

Most retirees have little other than Social Security to support them in their retirement. In large part, this is due to the economic mismanagement of the supercommittee types. If they or their friends, like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, actually had been doing their jobs, we would not have had the huge housing bubble that wrecked the economy. The collapse of this bubble caused most of the wealth that retirees and near retirees had accumulated in their home to disappear, leaving them with nothing other than Social Security to sustain them in retirement. Now, they want to cut Social Security as well.

https://mail.justice4all.org/owa/

[rgbecker]

1. A simple user tax like the federal gasoline tax.

If you are going use the dollar to make more of them by lending them out and trading them back in forth, then pay a simple 1 or 2% use tax.

It'l take an occupation to get that across.

[shraby]

2. The "super committee" is NOT representative of the nation

as a whole. It's a sham and shouldn't even been formed.

[FiveGoodMen]

3. Anyone who thought that the SuperCommittee was created for good and not evil

was a fool.

[Douglas Carpenter]

4. knr

[Scuba]

5. "Supercommittee of the One Percent" nails it. n/t

[nashville_brook]

6. ugh

[spanone]

7. been predicting they will make all their cuts in, you guessed it, 'entitlements'

[Enthusiast]

8. ...

[JDPriestly]

9. I must add that seniors who during their working lives

are getting virtually no interest on the money they saved, so even those who were very prudent in their younger years are relying solely on Social Security.

After all, how much can you realistically save if you earn maybe $30-40,000 per year, much less if you earn only $16-20,000 per years, especially if you raise a family?

Please. Let's get real here.

Social Security has worked so well for our country.

Here is what it will mean to less wealthy young people if Medicare and Social Security are cut: they will have to help their parents and probably end up crowding their parents into their small homes. How would you like to try to raise your small children in a house in which you are caring for your mother with Alzheimers? Sounds pretty overwhelming doesn't it?

Well, some young Americans are going to have to deal with that. It's a pretty horrendous thought in my view.