Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Who Stops Paying Social Security Taxes After Today?

Take a guess; how many Americans earn $50 million or more per year? Answer: 199 earn a wage or salary of over $50 million a year which turns out to be about $117,000 daily. (Most of the very wealthy get their incomes from investments, not salaries.)

Why are these fellow Americans interesting? Why is $117,000 a day an interesting number? Because after today those fellow country men and women stop paying Social Security taxes (they continue to pay Medicare tax all year). The Social Security earnings cap is $117,000 per year.

If you have wages and/or self-employment income that is covered by Social Security you pay Social Security taxes up to a maximum amount that is set by law each year. For 2014, that amount is $117,000 (last year it was $113,700).

After tomorrow these folks will pay no Social Security taxes, but they will pay Medicare tax all year long because Medicare, since 1993 has had no cap.

What would happen if everyone eligible paid everything all year long? The Social Security system would be solvent indefinitely and they still would be the richest and prettiest in all the land. Robert Frank was on to them for decades.

Serious Social Security financing options include raising the cap, which happens to be the most popular option among Americans, most of whom earn less than $50,000,000 per year!

By the way, who are these top earners? The labor movement and Forbes magazines keeps a public list.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: Teresa Ghilarducci

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