- Social Security is going bankrupt. Since 1981 when Ronald Reagan cut the top marginal income tax rate by 70%, the way pay is distributed has shifted. It used to be that 20% of income went to the top 10% - now, 50% of income goes to the top 10%. The Social Security Trust Fund is funded with a payroll tax of 12.4% (split between employer and employee). For income over $118,500, the payroll tax is not accrued. This means that as income shifted from being distributed roughly evenly to being distributed more and more unevenly, more money became ‘exempt’ from the Social Security payroll tax. The currently annual “short” to the Social Security Trust Fund is in excess of $450 Billion. If taxes had been assessed on this income, we wouldn’t need to change anything about social security. Just one year of assessing these taxes extends the life of the trust fund by 7 years - we could reverse the entire ‘problem’ of social security in a decade by simply charging the payroll tax on all income. But Republicans insist that the program is unworkable.
- We can’t afford to do (program here). The US economy produces in excess of $18T worth of goods and services currently - and this is with 40% of the workforce idle (ie, 40% of people who are able to work aren’t and we still produce $18T worth of stuff). Tax collection is near its lowest share of GDP ever. There’s no such thing as “can’t afford” - we don’t want to pay for, that doesn’t mean we can’t afford it.
- Single Payer Health Care Can’t Work. Here’s a secret the Republicans won’t tell you: the US already has single payer health care. There are 113 million US citizens on single payer government funded health care right now. And guess what? There’s no crisis. There’s no terror. They have the most affordable health care - by far - of any segment of the population. They consistently rate the quality of their care very highly - and studies show that their outcomes are better than the average person, and improving. Single payer works: It’s called Medicare. There’s a reason that the elderly get furious when anyone threatens Medicare - it’s because it works well, is affordable, and they like it.
- Government is Inefficient. A government is no different than a business. It has a CEO, it has employees, managers, HR people, accountants, etc. It has customers, revenues, expenses. It has a board of directors who set policy and oversee its operations. Now, government certainly can be inefficient. But there is nothing inherent about government that makes it inefficient.
- Taxation limits freedom. Money isn’t freedom, guys. At some point, Republicans were able to work some mind voodoo on a certain segment of the population, and they began to confuse freedom with money. Freedom isn’t money - the two have nothing to do with each other. They are orthogonal. Quite aside from the legal reality that ‘freedom’ is not ‘money’ - you will also personally be much happier if you realize that having more money does not make you more free.
Read other answers by Tristan Walker on Quora:
- It is easy to delineate the Republican Party’s strategic weaknesses, but can the same be done for the Democratic Party?
- Why, in general, does the GOP seek to limit the number of eligible voters while the Democrats seek to increase it?
- Is Trump trying to pander to Bernie Sanders supporters?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2jPVQZX
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