The Daily Hatch“Soccer Saturday” Best Goals 2010 World Cup Part 2
2010 FIFA World Cup – Best Goals So Far…. Pt 4
Uploaded by jacob8898 on Jul 8, 2010
I’m very very sorry for the quality of this video. I was much better the first time I uploaded it. I uploaded it about a week ago, it got 15,000 views and then Youtube removed it for a reason I still dont kno. These are all the best goals scored in the 2010 FIFA World Cup since part 3. Please rate, leave a comment, and Subscribe!!!
“Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity,” Heritage Foundation, May 10, 2011 by Stuart Butler, Ph.D. , Alison Acosta Fraser and William Beach is one of the finest papers I have ever read. Over the next few days I will post portions of this paper, but I will start off with the section on Social Security. I am also going to give attention to the thoughts of Milton Friedman on the subject too. Here is the seventh portion:
An Improved Savings Plan to Supplement Social Security. As Social Security is transformed into a real insurance system that focuses scarce resources on those who need them most, the plan also creates better ways for workers to build savings for retirement.
Beginning in 2014, a new savings plan will be introduced over two years. Under this plan, 6 percent of each worker’s income is placed in a retirement savings plan that the worker owns and controls unless he or she explicitly declines to have such an account. (This approach is known as automatic enrollment.)
This new, additional retirement security system gives Americans another tool with which to secure their retirement standard of living. Savings are invested through an improved version of the IRA/401(k) employment-based retirement savings system already familiar to Americans. The money put into these savings accounts will not be double-taxed, unlike today’s Social Security payments and many other savings mechanisms.
In addition to this new savings plan, workers have two other important ways to save for retirement.
First, under the reformed tax system detailed below, all savings (without limit) will no longer be double-taxed. Savings remain completely free of taxation until they are actually spent.
Second, as benefit reforms drive the costs of Social Security below the level of taxes collected, those savings will go into the workers’ accounts.
The Bottom Line
The Heritage plan reforms Social Security to create a retirement security system that will be available for future generations. It will be one that provides a reasonable, predictable, and affordable benefit that ensures that no retiree who has worked for 35 years or more faces poverty or economic insecurity. At the same time, this new system protects our children and grandchildren from the massive tax increase that would be necessary to pay all of the Social Security benefits that Washington has irresponsibly promised.
Rick Perry says Social Security is a Ponzi scheme
Rick Perry and Mitt Romney went after each other at the debate over this term “Ponzi scheme.”
Over and over Rick Perry has said that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and I agree with him. John Brummett asserted,”Rick Perry was last week’s savior, but then he got caught not believing in Social Security, which is a general election problem in, say, Florida.” However, it is my view that entitlements must be looked at and the cold hard facts show that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme!!!
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The Social Security Rorschach Test
by William Shipman
This article appeared on The Daily Caller on September 21, 2011
Comments by Rick Perry and Mitt Romney on Social Security during the last two Republican presidential debates may have provided more insight into these two men than expected — something to ponder with the next debate coming up.
Mr. Romney told us that he is “committed to saving Social Security” and that “under no circumstances would I ever say by any measure it’s a failure.”
Mr. Perry called the system a “Ponzi scheme” and said it’s “a monstrous lie” to tell young workers that their payroll taxes will provide them with Social Security benefits.
Bill Shipman is chairman of CarriageOaks Partners, LLC and co-chairman of the Cato Institute Project on Social Security Choice.
Mr. Romney replied that Mr. Perry’s position could disqualify him as the GOP nominee. Apparently, a line has been drawn.
In his 2005 State of the Union Address, President Bush spent about 20 percent of his time talking about Social Security reform, specifically personal investment accounts. Democrats fought this idea with all their strength. Although it’s less well known, Republicans engaged in a family brawl in which many fought Mr. Bush’s investment-accounts idea, too. They were afraid that if they supported the president, they would lose their next elections.
But now the brawl has broken through the Republican skin and is in the open. What can we learn from this?
First, reflect upon Governor Romney’s point that Social Security is not a failure “by any measure,” and try to square that with the fact that Social Security is mandatory. Each worker is compelled to pay 10.6% of his wage, on up to $106,800, to the government for the retirement portion of the system. That means the average-wage earner has no choice on how to allocate 10.6% of his wage income for retirement. That’s bad enough, but it’s made worse by the fact that his Social Security benefits are very low: about half of what his Social Security taxes would provide if they were invested in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds.
Second, in 1950, when there were 16 workers per beneficiary, the payroll tax rate was just 3% on $3,000 of wages. Since then the tax rate increased 18 times, and the wage subject to the tax increased 43 times. After adjusting for inflation the maximum tax jumped 1,322%. Benefits rose as well, but proportionally much less. The squeeze in benefits relative to taxes has progressively made the system a worse deal.
Third, Social Security’s actuaries estimate that the mismatch between future taxes and benefits is just under $7 trillion. That number represents what must be invested right now, in addition to all future payroll taxes, in order to pay scheduled benefits.
Finally, in the 1960 Flemming v. Nestor case, the Supreme Court ruled that workers have no property rights to their scheduled benefits. The government can reduce them at will, which it did in 1983 by increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67; or it can increase the tax at will, which it consistently has done. Also, when one member of an elderly couple dies, the government — in most cases — reduces Social Security benefits by a third. Sort of a death tax.
This system of no choice, low benefits relative to taxes, significant tax increases, a massive unfunded liability, the absence of personal property rights and a death tax apparently does not rise to the level of failure “by any measure” according to Gov. Romney.
For his part, Gov. Perry has called Social Security a Ponzi scheme: a fraudulent investment operation that pays subscribers not from investment earnings but from new subscribers’ funds. To entice subscribers, such schemes must provide unusually high and/or stable returns. Given that the high returns require endless new subscribers to pay off previous ones, such schemes ultimately fail.
Although Mr. Perry’s Ponzi analogy is not technically correct, it has some validity in that Social Security benefits are financed by ever more subscribers — that is, wage earners. But unlike a Ponzi scheme, Social Security is not fraudulent, and it doesn’t pay large benefits relative to taxes. Indeed, it pays low benefits. A Ponzi scheme promises high returns. That’s why people freely, although foolishly, play the game. Social Security promises low returns. That’s why people are forced to play the game.
Mr. Romney has stated that the Republican nominee must be committed to saving Social Security, not abolishing it. It’s not clear what he means. Does he want to save the objective of Social Security, which is, broadly speaking, the provision of retirement benefits? Or does he want to save its structure wherein today’s young finance benefits for today’s old?
Mr. Perry says the system is a Ponzi scheme and a lie. Does this mean that he wants to get rid of the structure yet keep the objective? Or does it mean that he wants to get rid of both?
The two candidates’ differences on this issue may shed light on bigger philosophical disagreements they may have. Do they see government as bungling but benign, only in need of a seasoned CEO who can more successfully manage the enterprise? Or do they see government as overreaching, stifling, oppressive and hurtful in its reach, and in need of a strong and principled leader to shove it out of the way?
How these candidates deal with Social Security, the government’s largest program, may shed light on who they really are.
Many of the family members of 9/11 victims have asked: How can a good God allow evil and suffering?
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Answers the problem of evil and a good God… puts the issue squarely in the lap of the skeptic asking the question (where it belongs).
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In his article “A Conversation with an Atheist,” Rick Wade notes:
The problem of evil is a significant moral issue in the atheist’s arsenal. We talk about a God of goodness, but what we see around us is suffering, and a lot of it apparently unjustifiable. Stephanie said, “Disbelief in a personal, loving God as an explanation of the way the world works is reasonable–especially when one considers natural disasters that can’t be blamed on free will and sin.”{17}
One response to the problem of evil is that God sees our freedom to choose as a higher value than protecting people from harm; this is the freewill defense. Stephanie said, however, that natural disasters can’t be blamed on free will and sin. What about this? Is it true that natural disasters can’t be blamed on sin? I replied that they did come into existence because of sin (Genesis 3). We’re told in Romans 8 that creation will one day “be set free from its slavery to corruption,” that it “groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” The Fall caused the problem, and, in the consummation of the ages, the problem will be fixed.
Second, I noted that on a naturalistic basis, it’s hard to even know what evil is. But the reality of God explains it. As theologian Henri Blocher said,
The sense of evil requires the God of the Bible. In a novel by Joseph Heller, “While rejecting belief in God, the characters in the story find themselves compelled to postulate his existence in order to have an adequate object for their moral indignation.” . . . When you raise this standard objection against God, to whom do you say it, other than this God? Without this God who is sovereign and good, what is the rationale of our complaints? Can we even tell what is evil? Perhaps the late John Lennon understood: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain,” he sang. Might we be coming to the point where the sense of evil is a proof of the existence of God?{18}
So,… if there is no God, there really is no problem of evil. Does the atheist ever find herself shaking her fist at the sky after some catastrophe and demanding an explanation? If there is no God, no one is listening.
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Dan Mitchell discusses the effectiveness of the stimulus
Uploaded by catoinstitutevideo on Nov 3, 2009
11-2-09
When I think of all our hard earned money that has been wasted on stimulus programs it makes me sad. It has never worked and will not in the future too. Take a look at a few thoughts from Cato Institute:
by Michael D. Tanner
This article appeared in The New York Poston September 13, 2011.
On Thursday night, the president laid out his plan for job creation, a $447 billion stimulus proposal, most of which we have seen before. After all, if Congress passes this new round of government spending, it would be the seventh such stimulus program since the recession began. George W. Bush pushed through two of them, totaling some $200 billion, and Obama already has enacted four more, with a total price tag of roughly $1.3 trillion.
The result: Three years and $1.5 trillion of spending later, we are back to the same gallimaufry of failed ideas. Among the worst:
3. Bailing Out the Teachers Unions. The president’s plan calls for spending $35 billion in grants to states to hire or retain some 280,000 teachers. The president wants to spend another $30 billion to repair and modernize school buildings, with the catch that school districts that accept the funds are prohibited from laying off any teachers. Spending on school building and repair has already increased by 150% over the last two decades, without either improving education or generating many jobs. And the greatest threat to teacher retention is not a lack of federal aid, but burdensome labor contracts.
4. More Infrastructure Spending. Like all the stimulus bills before it, the president’s latest proposal calls for still more pork barrel spending for “infrastructure.” One begins to wonder why we haven’t paved over the entire country by now. No doubt there are roads and bridges in need of repair, but the ability of the federal government to sort out good projects from bad is debatable at best. And the president is once again planning to plow money into such dubious projects as high-speed rail.
5. More Tax Hikes. Worst of all, the president plans to pay for all this new spending by — you guessed it — raising taxes on businesses and high-income Americans. The president, once again, referred to “millionaires and billionaires” in his speech, but his actual proposal calls for raising taxes on families earning as little as $250,000 per year. In places like New York, that’s not the “super rich.” In addition, many of these tax hikes would fall on small businesses. The president’s jobs plan, then, is to tax exactly those people and businesses that create jobs. And all this is on top of the new taxes and regulations that the Obama administration has already pushed through.
It’s not just the details of the president’s proposal that are wrongheaded, it’s the basic concept. The real drags on our economy have nothing to do with the failure of government to spend enough. The federal government is now spending roughly 24% of GDP. State and local governments are spending another 10% to 15%, meaning government at all levels is spending roughly 40 cents out of every dollar produced in this country. If government spending brought about prosperity, we should be experiencing a golden age.
The president’s plan is a bit like having someone break your leg then give you a crutch and call it a stimulus. Might it not be better to avoid breaking your leg in the first place? It’s time to stop spending, cut taxes, reduce our debt, and rollback burdensome regulation. That will generate far more jobs than any government jobs program.
When it comes to stimulus, the seventh time is not the charm.
Barrett Jones of Alabama Crimson Tide has spent time the last two years ministering to earthquake victims in Haiti. (Barrett grew up and went to ECS where I graduated and to Bellevue Baptist where I was a member while growing up. Adrian Rogers was the pastor from 1972 to 2004.) Actually I wrote about Barrett’s faith in Christ and you can read my article at this link.
I am hoping my Arkansas Razorbacks win the game tomorrow, but Barrett Jones is a winner in life because of his relationship with Christ. He has been a Christian leader on that team and even Coach Saban has noticed.
For the second straight year, Alabama right guard Barrett Jones spent his spring break helping people in Haiti.
The Democrat-Gazette reported this morning:
By Sean Beherec
LITTLE ROCK — The state Crime Laboratory determined a 24-year-old man found dead in a bathtub with a Little Rock meteorologist in a Maumelle home died from asphyxiation, police said Thursday.
The manner of death of Paul Dexter Williams of Mountain Pine was officially listed as undetermined after an autopsy by Associate Medical Examiner Frank Peretti. There were also “significant findings of acute combined methamphetamine and amphetamine intoxication,” according to a statement released by Maumelle police Thursday.
On the morning of Sept. 5, Maumelle officers were called to the home of ChristopherBarbour at 16 Village Way.
Barbour, 36, told police that he had invited Little Rock meteorologist Brett Cummins, 33, to his house the previous night and Cummins arrived with Williams around 8 p.m., a police report said.
The men began to drink and use illegal narcotics, Barbour told police. He said he wasn’t sure what the drugs were, but said “they were snorting them.”
Barbour said that around 10 p.m., Cummins and Williams entered the tub and Barbour later joined them. Barbour said he left the other two men around 11 p.m. and went to sleep on the couch inthe living room.
The next morning, Barbour found the men in the tub, which had no water in it. Barbour woke Cummins and the men realized Williams was not conscious and his face was a “different color.”
Cummins, a meteorologist on KARK-TV, Channel 4, at the time of the death, resigned from the station Sept. 9.
The Police Department will turn the case over to the Pulaski County prosecuting attorney’s office, which will determine whether charges will be filed. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said the case file had not been received.
This article was published today at 4:04 a.m.Arkansas, Pages 10 on 09/23/2011
Arkansas 10
Related posts:
I welcome the input from those that read my blog. Recently I received some criticism from readers and Jordan is probably more of the most vocal. He wrote today, “I hardly see a ‘tragic’ death as you call it, a morally sound reason to throw in people’s faces what drugs do to people…You know as […]
In today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Linda Caillouet wrote: LITTLE ROCK — When news broke of the death of Dexter Williams over the Labor Day weekend at a Maumelle home visited by then-KARK meteorologist Brett Cummins, most local news media reported details from the police report. This newspaper, KATV and KTHV reported that police said the body of […]
What started out on Sunday night September 4 as a local story now has grabbed national attention through both CNN and Fox News. Brett Cummins, 33, is seen in a photo on the website of Little Rock station KARK-TV. Cummins works as a meteorologist for the station. Police Probe Death of Arkansas Man Found in […]
KATV reported: Ark. weatherman quits after found with body in tub Posted: Sep 09, 2011 5:45 PM CDTUpdated: Sep 09, 2011 6:00 PM CDT By JEANNIE NUSS Associated Press LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – An attorney for an Arkansas meteorologist who was found in a hot tub with a dead body earlier this week says his client […]
I have mentioned before that I thought it was sad that KARK ignored the fact that Brett Cummins was snorting coke with the young man, Dexter Williams, on Sunday night and that Williams died as a result. Now at least the other stations in the Little Rock Market have been covering the story. Rival Stations […]
KARK’s website includes these words: Thursday afternoon, Brett Cummins released the following statement to CNN through his attorney: Brett Cummins is devastated by the tragic death of his friend Dexter Williams and extends his sincere condolences to Dexter’s family. They remain foremost in his thoughts and prayers. Mr. Cummins deeply regrets the grief this incident […]
Today’s THV channel 11 in Little Rock reported: MAUMELLE, Ark. (AP) – An attorney for a local meteorologist says no foul play was involved in the death of a 24-year-old Mountain Pine man. Little Rock-based lawyer Mark Hampton said Thursday that KARK meteorologist Brett Cummins is innocent. Authorities say Cummins and the body of 24-year-old […]
Drugs and alcohol have always been a pitfall that many of the wealthy fall into. We see rock bands that become famous have lots of temptations thrown their way and many fall into these traps. Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Barry McGuire fell into these traps. One joined the “27 Club” and the other left the […]
The recent events in Little Rock concerning KARK TV’s top weatherman Brett Cummins and his experience of drinking alcohol and snorting coke has left a lot of people asking questions. Since the evening ended in the tragic death of one of Brett’s friends, Dexter Williams, many questions have centered on the use of illegal drugs. […]
These are some pictures of Dexter Williams. Unfortunately his life was cut short while drinking and snorting coke with KARK weatherman Brett Cummins. (Cummins has resigned as of Friday.) Dexter Williams (Photo from family) Dexter Paul Williams (facebook photo) Related posts: Should recent events in Little Rock be reason to blog about the dangers of […]
Addington, McConaghy Debate Obama’s Jobs Plan
Published on Sep 9, 2011 by Bloomberg
Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) — David Addington, vice president at the Heritage Foundation, and Ryan McConaghy, economic director at Third Way, discuss President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan. They speak with Deirdre Bolton and Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg)
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It is a time for statemen. However, President Obama steps up to the plate and fails to swing.
September 20, 2011 at 9:37 am
Two years ago, as the United States was coming out of the last recession, President Obama was asked how raising taxes on anyone would help with the economy. The President’s answer? “Normally you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t, and why we’ve instead cut taxes.” Fast forward to today, as America is struggling with zero job growth and a stagnant economy, and the President has dramatically changed his rhetoric, proposing $1.5 trillion in new taxes on the American people and the country’s job creators.
Those massive tax increases come as part of the President’s plan to reduce the nation’s out-of-control debt, but rather than address the underlying spending problem, it will further deepen America’s economic quagmire and only serves to stall the real reform America needs in order to get on a path of fiscal sanity, as Heritage’s Alison Fraser explains:
Obama is demanding a ‘balanced’ approach as though somehow hiking taxes is both fair and necessary. But this notion that he is pushing — half tax hikes and half spending cuts — is beyond the class warfare message it sends. It is a tactic. A tactic to stall the real reforms that our leaders in Washington must undertake now in order to avert a fiscal, economic and moral crisis.
Real reform is necessary because of the depth and scope of America’s spending nightmare. ”The federal government today is claiming roughly one-fourth of total economic output — about 25 percent of gross domestic product,” Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen writes. That’s a post-World War II record, and it’s a huge drag on the economy since all that spending is paid for by taxes and borrowing, which reduce the amount available for investment in the private economy. And down the road, the outlook isn’t good: Social Security is growing at a rate of 5.8 percent per year, Medicare at 6.3 percent, and Medicaid at 9 percent. Unless those programs are fundamentally reformed, their costs will keep going up, and taxes will have to keep being increased to pay for them.
Disappointingly, the President yesterday retreated from his previous overtures to entitlement reform and took Social Security reform off the table while proposing minor cuts to Medicare and Medicaid–rather than the reform that would make a significant difference for the country. Obama’s plan is bad news for our nation’s defense as well, posing even more radical cuts for an already under-funded military.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that the President’s plan ignores America’s core spending problems, his plan to drastically raise taxes is coming at a time when the country can least afford it. How will the latest Obama tax increase play out? Heritage’s Curtis Dubay explains:
The new revenue would come from allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for families and small businesses earning more than $250,000 a year, limiting their deductions, and the President’s new “Buffett Rule” that would further raise these job creators’ taxes in some way which the President has not defined. He also wants to eliminate deductions, credits, and exemptions. This is a war the President is waging on success–as if so-called fat cats were the root of our spending problems.
The President has set his sights on the wealthy despite the fact that the top 10 percent of earners in America already pay about 70 percent of federal income taxes. And taxing America’s job creators will only serve to reduce productivity, slow economic growth, depress wages and salaries, and decrease household wealth. To use the President’s own words, raising taxes in bad economic times would “take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.” Where is that President Obama today?
Raising taxes will not fix our budget and debt crisis. But it can be solved by transforming our entitlement programs, rolling back wasteful and inefficient spending, protecting the nation, and overhauling our punitive, inefficient and noncompetitive tax code, as laid out in Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending and Restore Prosperity.
America is facing an unemployment crisis, a debt crisis, a spending crisis, and an entitlement crisis. Instead of making things better, President Obama wants to make matters worse by icing that nightmarish cake with massive tax increases. Two years ago, President Obama emphatically renounced raising taxes in a recession. Now, with the 2012 election looming, he has changed his tune and is taking aim at America’s job creators in a game of class warfare designed to play to his liberal base. Job creation has fallen by the wayside.
“Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity,” Heritage Foundation, May 10, 2011 by Stuart Butler, Ph.D. , Alison Acosta Fraser and William Beach is one of the finest papers I have ever read. Over the next few days I will post portions of this paper, but I will start off with the section on Social Security. I am also going to give attention to the thoughts of Milton Friedman on the subject too. Here is the sixth portion:
More Accurate Inflation Protection. The annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security, which protects retirees against inflation, will be based on the Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI-U), a measure of inflation that is more accurate than the index used currently. The Bureau of Labor Statistics specifically designed this inflation measure to better reflect the way that consumers buy different items as the prices of various products fluctuate.
A More Reasonable Retirement Age. The plan adjusts the retirement age to reflect increases in life expectancy and those anticipated in the future. Under the plan, these changes are phased in gradually. Those nearing retirement are affected only slightly. Over the next 10 years, the age for full benefits rises to 68 for workers born in or after 1959. Over the next 18 years, the early retirement age rises to 65 for workers born in or after 1964. After that, both early and normal retirement ages will be indexed to longevity, which will add about one month every two years according to current projections.
The plan recognizes that a small proportion of workers will be physically unable to work until these ages. It therefore includes an improved disability system to protect them. The reformed disability system ensures that those who are unable to work longer receive a quick and accurate decision on their benefit application rather than facing today’s long delays, and improves today’s often arbitrary decision-making process.
Incentives to Work Longer. Starting immediately, those who work past their full-benefit age receive a special annual tax deduction of $10,000, regardless of income level. For instance, once the new system is completely phased in, a worker earning $50,000 per year who delays Social Security payments will see a $200 per month increase in spendable income.
IOUSA Solutions: Part 3 of 5
Uploaded by IOUSAtheMovie on Aug 25, 2010
The award-winning documentary I.O.U.S.A. opened up America’s eyes to the consequences of our nation’s debt and the need for our government to show more fiscal responsibility. Now that more Americans and elected officials are aware of our fiscal challenges, the producers of I.O.U.S.A. created I.O.U.S.A.: Solutions, a follow-up special focusing on solutions to the fiscal crisis. Learn more at http://www.iousathemovie.com/.
Governor Rick Perry got in trouble for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme and I totally agree with that. This is a series of articles that look at this issue. The film series IOUSA does a great job of showing that Social Security is a bust. Perry is right on this.
Great article from Heritage Foundation on Social Security System that shows that tax hikes are not the answer:
Social Security is currently unsustainable. It began running deficits in 2010 and its trust fund will be exhausted by 2036, which is when seniors will see about a 25 percent cut in benefits. This is the scenario we face if Congress and the President fail to enact meaningful entitlement reform and continue reckless fiscal policies. This course is reversible, however.
At a recent House Budget Committee hearing on the fiscal facts concerning Medicare and Social Security, Members were divided on how to save Social Security. Despite hearing from Steve Goss, Social Security’s chief actuary, that raising taxes is not a necessity, tax hikes remained the leading option among certain lawmakers. Both parties agree that Social Security is insolvent, but they disagree on what to do about it.
Raising taxes, however, is not an option. Amidst the greatest recession in three decades, higher payroll taxes threaten to damage the American economy. Heritage has a new plan for Social Security, as presented in Saving the American Dream. It promises to restore fiscal responsibility and protect Americans from unneeded tax hikes.
At present, workers and their employers each pay 6.2 percent for Social Security retirement and disability benefits, adding up to a 12.4 percent payroll tax that is levied on every single worker’s income. If the government were to increase this tax to pay for Social Security’s deficits, every American worker and his boss would split an increase of at least 2.2 percent. Raising these taxes will discourage employers from hiring new workers and exacerbate unemployment.
Tax-loving lawmakers then turn to the tax cap. Social Security taxes are currently deducted only from the first $106,800 each worker earns. But some lawmakers suggest that any money Americans don’t “need” is fair game for tax hikes. President Obama most recently revealed this philosophy, fundamentally at odds with America’s job creators, during a press conference on the debt limit. Similarly, certain members at the recent House Budget Committee hearing suggested lifting the cap on the Social Security payroll tax to pay for the program’s shortfall. But taking more money out of the private economy limits entrepreneurial exercise—the true source of wealth in any free-market economy.
The Heritage Foundation plan does not call for unnecessary tax increases. Instead, it restores Social Security to its original purpose of being a safeguard against senior poverty. The plan includes both a transition into a flat benefit for those who work more than 35 years, as well as phasing out Social Security benefits for those who have significant non-Social Security retirement income. The plan also contains incentives to encourage Americans to work beyond the age at which they would normally receive benefits. Because Americans are living longer than ever before, they are spending more years in retirement. Therefore, Saving the American Dream calls for gradually increasing the retirement age and then indexing it to life expectancy.
Unemployment remains high, and Social Security faces serious fiscal challenges. It simply cannot afford to pay all of the future benefits it has promised. Elected leaders must realize that tax hikes are not the answer and that there are different ways to save both Social Security and the economy. Saving both requires our attention now, and as Heritage’s David John writes, “ [I]nstead of just blindly defending the current program, both Congress and the Obama Administration should propose comprehensive programs that permanently fix Social Security.”
The Daily Hatch 