Social Security Hurts the Poor and Elderly and Should be Abolished

I have read through your argument and will refute your major substantive points below. If I should leave some of your arguments out, it is because I thought they were too weak to encompass your overall thesis. Please let me know if you want me to clean them up in the last round. 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. 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! Now to address your arguments: You assert that 48.4 million people are on social security. 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. So ask yourself, Why are people who are able to save responsibly for retirement still being paid taxpayer-funded checks? If you look at page 23 from the source that you cited (http://price.house.gov...), it seems like that number is close to 50% for Married couples, and close to 30% for single people. Why are they receiving taxpayer money if they have money saved for retirement? 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." For example, if I saved $1,000,000 over my lifetime and received social security, the chart would say that I received 100% of my income from social security. Still, I will low-ball the figure because it does not hurt my argument. Notably, these people who saved over the years, and everyone else who couldn't, were taxed at 12% for their entire lifetime. Yet, we wonder why they do not have more money saved up over the years? It is really simple: You take the money away that they could save, and they have no savings. 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. The remainder of people would be cared for by friends, family, or foundations that would ensure better care for the elderly than our government. Yes, there would be poor elderly, but it would be substantially less than what we have now. Even so, your rebuttals of my points shown below are weak at best. "Your conclusion that the employee bears the burden for all of the tax is also faulty..." I'm sorry, this is just an objective fact if you look at the basic economics, which I will now have to outline for you below. 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) 2) I stated that, "Overall, the employees always lose because the money would go to the employee in some form or another if the employer were not required to pay the tax." You wanted evidence. Let me say this really slowly as well. 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: 1) Give it to your employee to better compete in the labor market; 2) Use it to hire another employee, which will reduce unemployment, and create one less person in need of social security years down the line; 3) Invest it in your business, which will be given to someone else's employee when you purchase goods or services; 4) Lower the cost of your goods to compete with other businesses and increase the standard of living for everyone else; 5) Keep it and spend it on other businesses, which will be used to pay for more workers; and 6) Save it and spend the money later (both help the economy, which helps workers). Overall, the money goes to the employee in some way or another and is "desirable" for the employee and society to answer your rhetorical question. Now to your last few points. "A large part of the recipients of benefits would be dependent in any case: the elderly and infirmed, the disabled, children, etc. as they have no other means for income or support. It as due to civic responsibility that the whole cares for these less-fortunate individuals, via the government." I'm am glad you declared this so by fiat, but you are ignoring the fact that government does not create wealth, the people do. After you create wealth, if you choose not to pay your taxes, the government comes to your house with armed police and throws you in jail. Forced compassion via violence and coercion is not a noble goal no matter who the money is going toward. But, to 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. Monopolistic governments have little or no incentive to improve care for those who are less fortunate. Lastly, I leave your most baseless argument for last. "I argue that, in addition to the option of various kinds of privatization (which are riddled with problems in-and-of themselves), there is another way to not abolish Social Security and at the same time hurt neither the poor or the elderly: the payroll tax could simply be made *much* more progressive. The working poor and the middle class would pay much less of their earnings, which many need all of in order to simply have the basic necessities of modern life, and the upper class and wealthy middle class would simply pay much more of theirs. With a radically progressive tax similar to what I have described, the program would cease to hurt the poor or elderly in any way, therefore it should not be abolished. It would probably provide a surplus to the program." Since the government spends all of the payroll taxes to fund the rest of the government, and there is no "lock box" (as you conceded), this would mean that you would bankrupt the social security system, and then make the people at the top of the income ladder pay even more in taxes. 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%. The reality is that over the last 2 decades, the rich have paid more and the poor have paid less. To make this clearer, note that in 2004 the government collected $832 in personal income taxes. The top 50% paid $804 billion. The top of the income bracket are the people who create all the jobs and provide all the goods and services that people want. If you tax them anymore, you might as well just say what you are really doing: Imposing socialism. History has not faired kindly toward massive redistribution of wealth. Unless, of course you like shortages, starvation, and poverty.