That's what all the talk about "saving" Social Security amounts to.
Ronald Reagan and his boy Alan Greenspan (and various and sundry
coconspirators) engineered an enormous shift of the tax burden from
the wealthy to the lower classes in 1983. The catch was, in the
future the burden would shift back. And people like Pete Peterson
have armies of minions fighting to make sure it never happens.
> "Starting in 1983, the payroll tax was deliberately set higher than it needed to be to cover payments to retirees. For the next 30 years, this extra money was sent to the Treasury, and this windfall allowed income tax rates to be lower than they otherwise would have been. During this period, people who paid payroll taxes suffered from this arrangement, while people who paid income taxes benefited.
>
> Now things have turned around. As the baby boomers have started to retire, payroll taxes are less than they need to be to cover payments to retirees. To make up this shortfall, the Treasury is paying back the money it got over the past 30 years, and this means that income taxes need to be higher than they otherwise would be. For the next few decades, people who pay payroll taxes will benefit from this arrangement, while people who pay income taxes will suffer.
>
> If payroll taxpayers and income taxpayers were the same people, none of this would matter. The trust fund really would be a fiction. But they aren't. Payroll taxpayers tend to be the poor and the middle class. Income taxpayers tend to be the upper middle class and the rich. ... When wealthy pundits like Krauthammer claim that the trust fund is a fiction, they're trying to renege on a deal halfway through because they don't want to pay back the loans they got."
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/we-think-it-might-be-possible-we-wont.html?m=1
They won't rest until we're back to feudalism or worse.
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