** Smirk Launches Another Torpedo To Sink Social Security! **

[TahitiNut]

The bastard is proposing that the $7,500 (or $15,000) exemption for health care insurance also be exempt from payroll taxes ... i.e. OASDI and HI (Social Security and Medicare). That would further starve the Social Security system of absolutely critical funding - funding that should get an assist by the increase in the federal minimum wage that would increase the wages (and, thus, payroll taxes) of more than 15,000,000 workers in this country. This is even more of a "poison pill" than this drain-bamaged piece of crap has been before.

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Olney Blue]

1. drain-bamaged- so true....

[bobbolink]

2. I'm guessing they're going to go all-out on assaults on the "safety net" this year

The question is.. Will Dems be paying attention?

Will "progressives" bother to look at anything besides the war?

This year could be very bad for us poor folk!

[TahitiNut]

3. It's appalling. There are people who really think that the only good worker ...

... is a worker scared to death of 'losing' their job - as though selling one's labor for 1/3rd of its value is some kind of privilege. It's balanced, of course, by the constant threat that there are those elsewhere in the world (or across a border) who'll do almost the same labor for 1/4th or 1/10th of its value.

It's all a matter of threat and coercion rather than working together for mutual benefit. No wonder jobs are becoming horrors.

Social Security is (rightfully, imho) financed by the payroll taxes of the "bottom 90%" ... but as the "bottom 90%" get a smaller and smaller and smaller share of the benefits of their own labor, we enter an era of big business holding our parents and grandparents hostage the coerce more hours out of folks trying to raise their own families and make a home. It's abominable.