Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Obama's Payroll Tax Deception

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, December 5, 2011

Obama's Payroll Tax Deception

Click here to access article by Frank Munley from OpEd News.

The author is correct in the implication that this payroll "tax cut" is a stealth attack on the Social Security retirement system. And now they want to increase the attack by reducing the employer's contribution along with the employee's as is currently the case. So, you may look forward to working until you drop dead or living off, and with, your children after you retire.

Previously I have been extremely critical of this ploy and the framing of the Social Security retirement contribution as a "tax". But then I discovered this Supreme Court decision of 1960 in which the Court decided that the benefit program was not a right. This was obviously done in order to deny benefits to a member of the Communist Party. So, I guess legally speaking, according to the judges appointed by the one percent, it is not a contractual benefit like a private insurance policy would be.

Also, Professor Allen W. Smith explains how the money is handled by our government: just dumped into the general funds and marked "Special Issues of the Treasury" which is just a fancy phrase for IOUs. Hence, the funds apparently are not invested in anything that can earn interest income. That is why all these recent attacks on the SS Trust Fund: it is not generating much surplus money anymore and the ruling one percent don't want to pay back all the money it has used to fund their wars, etc.