Social Security Hurts the Poor and Elderly and Should be Abolished

Before I proceed with any further arguments, let me say that I was unaware of any "overall thesis," besides you being for the Topic sentence and me being against it. Nowhere in your opening argument did I read the words: "...[T]he payroll tax creates the need for people to be on social security in the first place!" This is not what the debate is about; if it is, your Topic of Debate should have been "The payroll tax creates the need for people to be on social security in the first place, therefore the payroll tax and social security should be abolished." But that is not what you wrote. My position is that Social Security does not hurt the poor and elderly, and should therefore not be abolished. I am only arguing about the payroll tax to counter your arguments in Round 1; you evidently want the entire debate to be on the payroll tax alone. What it comes down to is that you must prove that Social Security hurts the poor and the elderly, and that it should be abolished for these reasons. I must provide a reasonable doubt that this is not the case. "Briefly, before I address your points, let me mention that you wasted much of your argument claiming that the Social Security system will not go bankrupt. This was nothing but filler because I agree with you! However, it will not go bankrupt so long as it is funded by the payroll tax, like a pyramid structure where the youthful bottom continues to fund the aging top." -Ok... I am not debating whether or not Social Security will go bankrupt, I am debating whether it is bad for the poor and elderly, and should be abolished. "You even brought up the fact that Alan Greenspan suggested increasing the payroll tax to ensure that it stays funded. Yes, this will certainly reach its purpose of funding a terrible system. Nevertheless, none of your lengthy sources used to buttress your response do the slightest to hurt my overall thesis that the payroll tax creates the need for people to be on social security in the first place!" -See the first paragraph. There *is no overall thesis* except for the topic we are debating. All else is secondary. "First of all, just because they are on social security, does not mean that they need social security. Many well-to-do people reach the age of 65 and get social security checks." -Good. Then Social Security isn't hurting them. "Why are people who are able to save responsibly for retirement still being paid taxpayer-funded checks? Why are they receiving taxpayer money if they have money saved for retirement?" -They are not being hurt by Social Security, so this point is really irrelevant, but the answer would be because they paid into the program: I assume from some of your statements that you would want your money (or at least as much as possible) back from the government that you gave it to. "Moreover, the total number of people who do not need social security is much greater than the tables on page 23 because money that people saved over the years is not considered "income."" -Excellent. Then you get them off of it, and perhaps more money would be available to give to those who do need it, or, alternatively, use the surplus to cut back the payroll tax. "...It is really simple: You take the money away that they could save, and they have no savings." -See my proposal of making the payroll tax, and for that matter *all* taxes, more progressive. I agree the poor should not be taxed in this way. "The fact of the matter is that if you removed social security entirely, the total number of people dependent on the system would decrease simply because they would have 12% more income than they started with." -Allow me to translate into an actual matter-of-fact: If you removed SS entirely, the total number of people dependent on the system would decrease simply because *there would be no system to be dependent on anymore* And if you're already on Social Security or Disability, you would not have 12% more than you started with because if you have no income you are starting from nothing. "The remainder of people would be cared for by friends, family, or foundations that would ensure better care for the elderly than our government." -This must be why there are no homeless people in the U.S. today. I'm sure adding more to be cared for by "misc." will turn out well. I mean, Americans are so caring and charitable! "1) I stated that, "Every employer would rather give his employee 6% more money if he did not have to pay 6.2% to the government." You asserted that this was "highly unlikely." Let me say this really slowly. If you had a choice to either give $6.20 to the government or $6.00 to your employee, who would you pay? (Jeopardy Music)" -I stand by my assertion that this is highly unlikely. And on your rebuttal: False dichotomy and an appeal to consequences fallacy. It is not a question of who I would rather pay *between the two if I had a choice* because your original argument said only "if he did not have to pay 6.2% to the government;" choice is not an option. But to answer your question, I rather keep it if I didn't have to pay it to the government. On the second fallacy, it doesn't matter if you believe that employers will just give this extra 6.2% to their employees - your belief has little to do with the truth-value of your statement. "If you pay your employee $100 an hour and 6.2% has to go toward paying the government, you lose $6.20 per hour. But, if you have that extra $6.20, you can do one of six things:" -Only the first of your six options applies directly to *the* (not an) employee that was previously there - this is the only way that the employee is financially impacted in a direct sense, the sense that counts. -The question wasn't rhetorical, nor was it meant to be - otherwise why on earth would you answer it? "...Forced compassion via violence and coercion is not a noble goal no matter who the money is going toward." -I'm not exactly crazy about the government, but it has its uses. Because I'm sure we'd all just give, give, give for all the things that are provided by the government if there were no taxes. As for your point in the sentence preceding the one I quoted there, talk to the government, not me:) "...[T]o address your concern about the disabled, and children, most of these people are better taken care of by new technology and the private sector than government bureaucracy." -This is simply laughable, but I only have limited space: it's more likely that the "private sector" will screw them over in a worse way than the government did. See above. "But, THEY ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY. In fact, they pay all the taxes in this Country already. According to the IRS the top 50% of all tax payers payed nearly 97% of all taxes. The bottom 50% barely paid any! In fact, from 1986 till now, the top 1%'s share of the tax burden has risen from 25% to 37%. The top 1% of wage earners pay 37% of the taxes! During this same time period, the burden shared by the bottom 50% shrunk in half from 6.5% to 3.3%." -GOOD. Considering that the top 1% of households control nearly 35% of the wealth in the U.S., the top 10% control over 71%, and the bottom 40% control 0.2%, this is still not good enough. http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu... "The top 50% paid $804 billion." -And rightly so. See above. I suggest you start making points about why Social Security in-and-of itself, not the payroll tax, hurts the poor and the elderly. The same goes for why Social Security, not the payroll tax, should be abolished. History has not fared kindly toward great massive gaps between the poor and middle classes and the bourgeoisie. Unless, of course, you like heads in baskets:)