Letters to the Editor

An easy fix for Social Security

May 10, 2007 4:57 PM

To the Editor:

Repairing Social Security is very, very simple! Increase the cap from $97,500 to an individual’s total income.

If a “middle class” wage earner pays 6.2 percent Social Security “tax” on his entire salary, why shouldn’t Bill Gates pay 6.2 percent on his entire annual $30 million dollar salary? Why shouldn’t the recently fired CEO of Home Depot pay 6.2 percent of his $480 million severance package? The CEO of Mobil-Exxon “earned” over $300 million last year. Good for him! He should pay 6.2 percent just like the average folks do.David Letterman earned $40 million? He should pay 6.2 percent.

Don’t forget, the employee’s employer pays the required matching 6.2 percent as well. This simple concept would put Social Security “in the black” forever!

In addition, this idea would allow a reduction of the payroll tax to possibly 4 or 5 percent, giving the average worker a few extra dollars a year to spend on gasoline and home heating oil and natural gas.

Amazingly, no one has proposed this concept. I am sure that there would be such a surplus that some of the money could be used to fund health care insurance for the 46 million Americans who are currently without any medical insurance.

Alas, this plan would be viewed as class warfare — tax the rich and give it to the poor. Obviously, Republicans would never sign off on this. Neither would Democratic liberals. Why? Because most liberals are very rich;the Streisands, the Baldwins, the Kennedys, the Sheens, Madonna, Soros, etc. Signing off on this plan would require them to put a lot of their own money where their big mouths are.

Robert P. Kralick, retired