Keeping Our Promise to America’s Seniors: Retirement Security in the 21st Century
House Budget, Keeping Our Promise to America’s Seniors: Retirement Security in the 21st Century, May 15, 2019
Finance, Challenges in the Retirement System, May 14, 2019
Subcommittee on Social Security, Protecting and Improving Social Security: Enhancing Social Security to Strengthen the Middle Class, March 12, 2019
To strengthen the middle class in retirement, we must understand the purpose of social insurance, who is in the middle class and how tax reform and employee-ownership can bring people into the middle class and keep them there.
Care for the retired was provided by families prior to the establishment of Social Security. Extended families provided shelter, income and health care because they had to. Allowing seniors to live independently freed the nuclear family to move without taking everyone with them. This led to a crisis in health coverage for those seniors left behind.
The logic of social insurance led to both Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This provided care for everyone regardless of accidents of birth or death. Without it, families with no surviving parents or grandparents would pay nothing, where only children might have to pay for both parents and their in-laws. This inequality still happens with housing and it strains many marriages.
Our comments on who belongs in the middle class come from the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures on How Middle Class Families are Faring in Today’s Economy held February 13, 2019 are omitted (repeated in Attachment One.) Our latest comments on Family Income and Employee-Ownership before the Subcommittee on Worker and Family Support on Leveling The Playing Field For Working Families: Challenges And Opportunities Thursday, March 7, 2019 are repeated in Attachment Two. Attachment Three restates or Social Security reforms last attached to our comments on the 2016 Trustees Report.
Our employee-ownership comments are based in two elements of our four-part approach to tax reform, the employee contribution to Old Age and Survivors Insurance and our Net Business Receipts/ Subtraction Value Added Tax.
The employee contribution will feature a lower income cap, which allows for lower payment levels to wealthier retirees without making bend points more progressive. This contribution is only retained if a tie between retirement income and wages is necessary to preserve broad based support for the program.
There should be a floor, however, because most of the heavy lifting to support retirees will come from the NBRT, with these contributions to FICA credited on an equal dollar basis, rather than as a tie to wage levels. Doing so makes contributions less regressive, both because they tax all value added and because there is no upper limit to their collection. This ends the need for the Earned Income Tax Credit and its replacement with a high child credit.
The NBRT/SVAT includes additional tax expenditures for family support, health care and the private delivery of governmental services. It will fund entitlement spending and replace income tax filing for most people (including people who file without paying), the corporate income tax, business tax filing through individual income taxes and the employer contribution to OASI, all payroll taxes for hospital insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and survivors under age 60.
Covering retirement will also be part of the NBRT. Employee-ownership is the ultimate protection for worker wages. Our proposal for expanding it involves diverting an every-increasing portion of the employer-contribution to the Old Age and Survivors fund to a combination of employer voting stock and an insurance fund holding the stock of all similar companies.
At some point, these companies will be run democratically, including CEO pay, and workers will be safe from predatory management practices. This is only possible if the Majority quits using fighting it as a partisan cudgel and embraces it to empower the professional and working classes.
Sadly, many people are trapped in poverty until they retire into a life of less poverty. Bringing families into the middle class through adequate family wages and building financial and real assets through employee-ownership. The dignity of ownership is much more than the dignity of work as a cog in a machine.
Finance, Challenges in the Retirement System, May 14, 2019
Subcommittee on Social Security, Protecting and Improving Social Security: Enhancing Social Security to Strengthen the Middle Class, March 12, 2019
To strengthen the middle class in retirement, we must understand the purpose of social insurance, who is in the middle class and how tax reform and employee-ownership can bring people into the middle class and keep them there.
Care for the retired was provided by families prior to the establishment of Social Security. Extended families provided shelter, income and health care because they had to. Allowing seniors to live independently freed the nuclear family to move without taking everyone with them. This led to a crisis in health coverage for those seniors left behind.
The logic of social insurance led to both Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This provided care for everyone regardless of accidents of birth or death. Without it, families with no surviving parents or grandparents would pay nothing, where only children might have to pay for both parents and their in-laws. This inequality still happens with housing and it strains many marriages.
Our comments on who belongs in the middle class come from the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures on How Middle Class Families are Faring in Today’s Economy held February 13, 2019 are omitted (repeated in Attachment One.) Our latest comments on Family Income and Employee-Ownership before the Subcommittee on Worker and Family Support on Leveling The Playing Field For Working Families: Challenges And Opportunities Thursday, March 7, 2019 are repeated in Attachment Two. Attachment Three restates or Social Security reforms last attached to our comments on the 2016 Trustees Report.
Our employee-ownership comments are based in two elements of our four-part approach to tax reform, the employee contribution to Old Age and Survivors Insurance and our Net Business Receipts/ Subtraction Value Added Tax.
The employee contribution will feature a lower income cap, which allows for lower payment levels to wealthier retirees without making bend points more progressive. This contribution is only retained if a tie between retirement income and wages is necessary to preserve broad based support for the program.
There should be a floor, however, because most of the heavy lifting to support retirees will come from the NBRT, with these contributions to FICA credited on an equal dollar basis, rather than as a tie to wage levels. Doing so makes contributions less regressive, both because they tax all value added and because there is no upper limit to their collection. This ends the need for the Earned Income Tax Credit and its replacement with a high child credit.
The NBRT/SVAT includes additional tax expenditures for family support, health care and the private delivery of governmental services. It will fund entitlement spending and replace income tax filing for most people (including people who file without paying), the corporate income tax, business tax filing through individual income taxes and the employer contribution to OASI, all payroll taxes for hospital insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and survivors under age 60.
Covering retirement will also be part of the NBRT. Employee-ownership is the ultimate protection for worker wages. Our proposal for expanding it involves diverting an every-increasing portion of the employer-contribution to the Old Age and Survivors fund to a combination of employer voting stock and an insurance fund holding the stock of all similar companies.
At some point, these companies will be run democratically, including CEO pay, and workers will be safe from predatory management practices. This is only possible if the Majority quits using fighting it as a partisan cudgel and embraces it to empower the professional and working classes.
Sadly, many people are trapped in poverty until they retire into a life of less poverty. Bringing families into the middle class through adequate family wages and building financial and real assets through employee-ownership. The dignity of ownership is much more than the dignity of work as a cog in a machine.
posted by Michael Bindner at 10:00 AM
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