Mitt Romney's Taxes - And Yours

So all the communists are piling on Mitt Romney because his effective tax rate is only about 15%.

Romney can end the discussion and condemnation with a simple statement::

"My effective tax rate last year was about fifteen percent, which everyone understands by now is due to the fact that most of my income is in the form of capital gains, taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income."

"Now that you've all shaken your heads at the unfairness of it all, let me point out that even at the lower rate, I paid more in income taxes last year than all my opponents and President Obama combined."

(Pause for effect.)

"All of them."

(Pause)

"Combined."

"Now, you can argue that capital gains should be taxed at the same high rate as ordinary income. But when you make that argument, remember that the pension funds of police officers, fire fighters, and teachers get much of their income from capital gains. So do the mutual funds you have in your IRA and 401(k). The more government taxes those capital gains away, the less money you will have when you're too old to work any more."

"Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it - especially if President Obama is re-elected."

Head Down to the Welfare Office to Apply for Your Social Security

Your government hasn't made any official announcement yet, but you can now start calling Social Security “welfare.”

It happened at the end of 2011, when Congress failed to return the Social Security tax – what the media misleadingly kept referring to as “the payroll tax” in hopes that you wouldn't notice - to the 6.2% rate it had been until January, 2011. It had been slashed to 4.2%, President Obama claiming that it would help reduce unemployment. Of course, the unemployment rate stuck stubbornly around nine percent all year long. Did Congress decide, “Well, that didn't work, so we might as well return the tax rate to 6.2% and try to keep Social Security semi-solvent”?

Of course not. It's an election year. You don't raise taxes in an election year, dummy.

“But we've been hearing that Social Security is going broke,” you say. “Isn't this going to make it go broke even faster?”

Never fear. The smart guys in Congress have that problem covered. The money that the so-called Social Security trust fund is losing by the tax cut is being replaced by “general revenue.”

What's “general revenue?” Simple. It's ordinary income tax revenue, the kind the IRS gets out of your paycheck every week, and gets a little more of (or refunds some of) every April 15.

No problem, then, right?

Well, here's the problem, which starts with a little digression:

You may have heard that almost fifty percent of all households pay no federal income tax, or get all the tax they paid refunded. A lot of people – most of them taxpayers – think this is wrong. Half the country doesn't pay for aircraft carriers, public highways, veterans' hospitals, food and drug inspectors, TSA agents, environmental protection, bank and securities regulations, and on and on.

“Don't be such a hater,” the non-haters reply. “Maybe they don't pay income tax, but they pay Social Security tax, so stop complaining.” (I hear this argument all the time, from people who are actually permitted to vote and to breed.)

Yes, they do pay Social Security tax, if they're working. But they now pay 32% less Social Security tax than they used to, and you just know that Congress is not going to raise the rate back up to 6.2% soon. So the difference is going to continue to be made up by “general revenue,” or, in other words, more taxes on the people who do pay income tax.

So what do we have here? We have a Social Security tax cut for everyone who has a job, which is then paid for by the half of the population that pays income taxes.

In other words, half the population pays 32% of the Social Security tax of the other half.

“Well, they can afford it, so why shouldn't they?” you hear from the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

Well, lots of things, starting with the fact that it turns Social Security into a welfare program - money the government takes from you to give to someone else, not because they have earned it, but simply because they need it.

Millionaires generally don't get food stamps. They don't generally get public housing (the president and governors are the only exceptions that comes readily to mind). They don't get Medicaid (medical assistance for the needy, not to be confused with Medicare). And they don't get Supplemental Security Income (cash payments to needy aged, blind, or disabled people, not to be confused with Social Security).

They don't get any of these things, because those benefits are based on financial need. The money doesn't come from your IRA, or your ex-employer's pension fund. You get them, from the government (i.e. from other taxpayers) simply because you would otherwise be homeless or would starve or would sicken and die.

Social Security, on the other hand, once was paid to rich and poor, once they'd stopped working, and the amount they received was based on what they had paid in Social Security taxes over their working lives. But now you hear politicians on both the right and the left saying that one of the things we'll probably need to do to save SocialSecurity is to “means-test” it. In English, that means, if your income is too high, or your savings are too high, your Social Security check will be reduced. Or maybe cut out entirely.

So Social Security will be paid for by the wealthy, to the poor.

How does that make Social Security any different from welfare?

Next time you hear President Obama say everyone must pay “their fair share,” remember that. Half the people pay not only all the personal income taxes, but 32% of everyone else's Social Security tax. 

That's fair, right?