Obama endorses Social Security expansion

[Fight for Trump]

They need to raise the age limits and get rid of the stupid ceiling and drop the percentage taken.  Is there any tax (other than maybe cig taxes) that affect the poor so much more than the rich?

I wouldn't call FICA a tax, because you are (theoretically) paying premiums directly into programs that you will benefit from later.

[Fight for Trump]

They need to raise the age limits and get rid of the stupid ceiling and drop the percentage taken.  Is there any tax (other than maybe cig taxes) that affect the poor so much more than the rich?

I wouldn't call FICA a tax, because you are (theoretically) paying premiums directly into programs that you will benefit from later.

A tax isn't a tax if you maybe benefit from the programs you are funding with it at some point? 

Read what I said. FICA is directly tied to two social insurance programs - Social Security and Medicare. When your payments are directly tied to a service, that is a premium, not a tax. If you park at a parking meter at City Hall, is the money you drop in the meter a tax? Of course not, it's a parking fee. We should look at FICA the same way. Many other countries refer to such payments as exactly what they are - social insurance premiums.

From an employer point of view, yes, FICA can be considered a tax of sorts.

[Fight for Trump]

They need to raise the age limits and get rid of the stupid ceiling and drop the percentage taken.  Is there any tax (other than maybe cig taxes) that affect the poor so much more than the rich?

I wouldn't call FICA a tax, because you are (theoretically) paying premiums directly into programs that you will benefit from later.

A tax isn't a tax if you maybe benefit from the programs you are funding with it at some point? 

Read what I said. FICA is directly tied to two social insurance programs - Social Security and Medicare. When your payments are directly tied to a service, that is a premium, not a tax. If you park at a parking meter at City Hall, is the money you drop in the meter a tax? Of course not, it's a parking fee. We should look at FICA the same way. Many other countries refer to such payments as exactly what they are - social insurance premiums.

From an employer point of view, yes, FICA can be considered a tax of sorts.

In that case the government should just tie portions of all the money it collects from us into different programs.  Then we won't have any taxes at all.  We can have a military premium, an education premium, an environment premium, a criminal justice premium etc etc.

But it doesn't work like that. The military, the EPA, the courts and (arguably) the education system don't provide services to individuals, they provide services to the collective, which is why they need to be funded through taxes. Social Security is a government-run pension program, and Medicare is a government-run insurance program that provide services directly to individuals.

Taxes imply that you, as an individual, will never get your money back because you are paying into the collective good as part of the social contract. Payroll taxes are directly tied to a benefit that you receive, making them premiums.

[Fight for Trump]

I like Social Security and Medicare, but the part that comes out of our paychecks is absolutely, positively, 100% a tax and not a premium for a pension or insurance.  Granted, to make the programs more politically palatable, they been paraded around from the beginning as if they were simply a Government-operated pension/insurance plans, but they aren't and never were.

So SS and Medicare do not have market-based pricing and are treated differently under the law from private pension/insurance plans. That doesn't mean they are not pension or insurance programs. Every contribution you make to SS increases your SS benefit in the future. You can't say the same about education, the military, infrastructure, or any of the other things that actual taxes pay for. The government could end the programs tomorrow, but that would be a gross violation of their end of the social contract.

I'm far from the only person who believes that FICA is not a tax. Many people on both sides of the political spectrum, and arguably most in federal government, think so.