Perot and His Charts are Back
Billionaire and presidential race spoiler Ross Perot is back. During the 1992 race Perot was famous for making economic charts and graphs part of his political process as he attempted to explain in clear terms the economic trends of taxation, government spending, GDP and national debt, and why he thought we were headed towards disaster.
Now Perot has launched a web site, Perot Charts, which is just stock full of charts and graphs highlighting America’s “economic crises” due to deficit spending.
In a statement Monday, Perot said the nation's debt reached $9.4 trillion in April and is rising more than $1 billion a day.
"We are leaving our children and grandchildren with debt they cannot possibly pay," he said. "The economic crisis facing America today is far greater than anything since the Great Depression."
There’s also a blog with some additional materials. I rather like this chart:
It clearly shows that the top 10 percent of earners pay an astounding 69.7 percent of the taxes in this country. Add in “earned income tax credit” and what we have here is wealth redistribution (can you say “socialism” children?).
Now we hear that Obama wants to eliminate the $250K limit on Social Security taxes:
The presidential candidate told senior citizens in Ohio that it is unfair for middle-class earners to pay the Social Security tax "on every dime they make," while millionaires and billionaires pay it on only "a very small percentage of their income."
This would be the largest expansion of FDR’s “New Deal” since LBJ’s “Great Society”. Obama would be turning something that was originally intended to be a pensioning program for retirees into yet another liberal wealth redistribution scheme. It’s bad enough that the government takes my money and returns it years later with a fraction of the interest that I could earn in the private sector. Now he wants to take money and flat out give it to people who didn’t earn it.
To further complicate matters, Obama is proposing a “Doughnut Plan” in which income between $102K and $250K would still be immune to Social Security tax. Any doubt that once in place, the hole of this “doughnut” would gradually shrink until it completely disappears?
McCain, on the other hand, would not consider an increase “under any imaginable circumstance” (something Obama would never promise). Then again, he is mangling the presentation of his Social Security plan to the point of appearing to be flip-flopping on the word that frightens liberals so much: “privatization”.
Hey McCain, when you allow younger workers to choose the accounts they want to put their retirement savings into it is in fact partial privatization, so don’t be afraid of calling it that. Old people will understand as long as you guarantee their retirement income too. We have to get out of this hole. Lead us there, and maybe even libertarians like me will follow.
Blog post #7018 in category
Social Security
posted 17 June 08
This is dangerous nonsense you peddle. You can't outlive Social Security; it is indexed for inflation and wage growth; there is no stock market risk. The transition costs to privatization are astronomical ($2-4 trillion, depending on the source). Minor changes in taxes and slight reductions in indexing will balance the existing program. If rich people want to save, there are 401K plans. Only those making over $150K per year have a realistic chance to build the assets necessary to retire, and that is less than 10% of the population. Real returns on the stock market will be more like 5% going forward than 10%, as the U.S. economy has matured.
Posted by Dave on Sunday at 6:26 PM