The Right-wing Attack on Social Security Is Un-American

Jim Hightower's Lowdown

Right-wing ideologues are mounting a three-pronged fraud trying to delegitimize Social Security, slash its benefits, then – zzzzzt – kill it.

First, they tried to demonize our public retirement program as a socialist horror. That hasn’t worked, since this pension literally works, allowing millions of workaday American families to escape old age poverty.

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So, in Lie Number Two, they shriek: “Social Security is bankrupt – you future retirees will be left penniless in old age!” Uh… no. The bulk of retiree benefits are covered by payroll taxes, which continue to flow in, so the program is in no danger at all of folding.

Well, they exclaim in Lie Number Three, even to keep the program on life support requires gutting it by raising people’s retirement age to 70 or older and slashing monthly payments to retirees.

Uh… gosh, no again. Such a gut-job would be immoral – half of America’s workers get no retirement benefits except Social Security. Plus, such callousness is totally unnecessary, because there’s an obvious, easy, and fair fix: Apply the Social Security tax to everyone!

While working stiffs pay this tax on every dollar they earn, millionaires and billionaires are taxed only on the first $170,000 of their astronomical pay. Take Elon Musk, the richest man in America, who claimed a $45 billion paycheck last year. But under current law he only pays Social Security taxes on $170,000 of that – meaning 44 billion, 999 million, 830 thousand dollars of his income goes untaxed. Why shouldn’t he pay like everyone else?

Tax everyone equally – the rich as well as the working class – so everyone can have a secure, dignified retirement. That’s what the American concept of the Common Good means.

Photo by Timothy Krause on Flickr.

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