US Deficit Commission wants lower corporate taxes

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That's what they're saying. They want to destroy Medicare and Social Security in the name of fighting the deficit and also to cover the revenue lost with corporate tax cuts they want. Obama really shouldn't have named this group commonly known as the Cat Food Commission.

even cat food is too dear for some of the more bereft folk who live out in my neck of the woods. some of them are found frozen to death in their trailers each year, for lack of heat.

Should the taxpayers of your state be tasked with keeping those trailers warm and the inhabitants thereof fed?

To what degree should person A with means be FORCED to support person B without means?

ruveyn

What's bizarre is that social security isn't even part of the federal budget. Cutting it doesn't reduce the deficit at all. I think there's intentional conflation going on there.

It's amazing how none of the people screaming about the deficit now said a word when Bush was running it up a couple of trillion.

Repubs in power == spend like mad, run up a big debt
Repubs out of power == complain about the debt, and demand spending be cut

Hehe, "cat food commission" -- hadn't heard that one.

The head of the Cat Food Commission is something else. A Republican ex-Senator from Wyoming. He claimed that Social Security was originally planned as a scam - that they expected almost everyone to be dead by age 65 when it was put into place. He also claimed that no one had heard of the Baby Boom in 1983! Later he made an idiotic and mean-spirited remark about how Social Security was about getting 300 million people to "suck the government's tits". Funny how he was allowed to stay in his place. By the way, it's not the official report of the Cat Food Commission as that is due early December. What happened was a proclamation from the two heads of the commission including the ex-Senator Simpson, the one who thought that no one knew of the Baby Boom in 1983.

They want to lower taxes for everybody, but they also want to completely eliminate tax deductions. Given that the wealthy and the corporations use tax deductions to lower their actual tax rate, they might actually pay more than they currently do under this plan.

i would rather live in a society where the common good was a priority, than this one. it seems you prefer nasty, brutish and short, as long as you are comfortably above it all. you have reason to rejoice, for your beloved banana republic is coming along here just swimmingly. soon there will be favelas everywhere the eyes can see, you just need peek between the bars of your locked gates to see the valley scenery down below. enjoy the view.

It IS part of the budget ever since the government raided the SS fund and left a big IOU in it's place. Who do you think funds SS benefits every year? There is no SS "Trust Fund." There is supposed to be one, but it went away a long time ago.

SS is not a retirement plan. It's a welfare plan for people legitimately unable to work. A few decades back, they pushed to make it more than it was intended to be, and thus began its downfall.

As far as the "common good" goes...it is just wrong to FORCE someone to support another against their will. In fact, given government mismanagement with finances, it is better for the private sector, through charities, to help those in need. More accountable, more money gets to those in need, less prone to exploitation by scammers.

Because there isn't a welfare program for it doesn't mean that society would let those in need lie in the street and die of exposure.

Do you approve of slavery? For under your ideas, the Iron Law of Wages would ensure effective slavery - people working for subsistence to be discarded as soon as no longer useful to the masters.

What does that have to do with Social Security?

Of course not. Permitting people to die in the streets would be much too unsightly. The Germans had it right on--create special camps for people to go and die.

Remember their cheery motto: "Arbeit Macht Frei!"

Individuals would be encouraged to work to postpone death.

Actually it is not wrong when it is a contractual agreement of a society. I think this rigid black-and-white notion of absolute rights against any form of coercion comes from our sheltered existence in a wealthy industrialized nation.

Private charity provides no guarantee that any individual person's needs will be met. In fact, donations to charity decline during economic hard times, just when greater numbers of people are in the most need of assistance. This is unsatisfactory.

One other thing. Your claim that private charities are less prone to exploitation by scammers is laughable.

Most of us are too young to remember the good times of the Great Depression, before Comrade Roosevelt instituted Social Security and other such horrors. The private soup kitchens did a much better job of feeding people than the government ever could.

No. In a free society, to be compelled to support something against your will is against the concepts of freedom and liberty. For every "entitlement" you enshrine with government, they now get to take from your substance to ensure to others.

The social contract is that government will protect my liberties in exchange for my loyalty and obedience. There is nothing is the social contract that government will feed me, clothe me, put a roof over my head, provide me with work. The more I expect them to provide, the less "free" I will become because for government to do any more than the bare minimum becomes an excuse for it to declare vast swatches of power for itself.



I ran a welfare program under contract for the US government. I can tell you that the levels of idiots who had jobs to push paper about meant you were lucky if 25 cents on a dollar got to the people who needed the aid. The rest was consumed in administrative overhead. My agency alone took 50% of the amount given to us to pay for costs incurred in running the program, and we were pinching pennies every place we could.

The main reason why charities do worse in hard times is exactly because of excessive taxation. The more you steal from a man's paycheck, the less charitable he feels when it comes to what's left over. You can pick and choose what charities you support, but government has a direct line to your paycheck 24/7.

I'd like to see how you think a private charity is less prone to exploitation from scammers than a government program. We were instructed to qualify people who met some very generic standards (set very low). Any number of people could do things to qualify even though they had no intention of using the aid to go back to work. A private charity can set it's own standards, is not subject to suit for not giving any given person aid, and even if you make the qualifications, if you give off a negative "vibe" that you are trying to cheat them, they can just say "no" with no repercussions.

Most any welfare worker knows most of the people getting benefits are scamming the system, but they must have proof from a professional investigator to deny benefits, and getting an official investigation needs more than their judgment that the recipient is up to no good. Practically a Catch-22...they must have proof before they can obtain proof.

To a corporation, social security is a tax. In fact, it is one of the largest taxes they pay, and no good way to plan around or avoid it. Want to hire a homeless man to shuffle a few papers? You need to get all the paperwork first, and plan on paying social security taxes with every dollar you pay the man. It is, in many ways, the most regressive tax anyone pays.

I believe that we should chuck the trust fund illusion and just integrate social security into the income tax system. We keep paying it as if it goes into an account with our names on it, but it never has and never will. Sure, your earnings are part of the formula for figuring out benefits, but that works out to be more a part of the illusion than the reality (I'm a little frustrated because despite over a decade of paying in the max, my projected benefits keep going down because my recent earnings - as I raise kids - are minuscule).

Not to say I agree with any particular proposal mentioned in this thread. Just to clarify how social security is viewed by business.

Actually social security could easily be changed for younger people into a defined contribution system rather than a defined benefit system. The government employees retirement system already works that way. That would probably be the best solution.

Also, regarding the earlier post, adult life expectancy was only a little over 65 in 1930, so it's true that social security was not expected to cover as many years originally as it does now. The retirement age has already been increased to 67 for most people, and a further increase does seem justified given the continued increases in life expectancy.

Regarding the original post, I think the intent is to set up incentives for companies to pay more dividends, which would then be taxed. I've yet to be convinced that those regulations make sense, though.