Taxation Without Representation Across Time

We continually hear from politicians and political commentators that they are worried about the debt and other problems that we are currently creating for future generations.

I was thinking today that while that is a valid concern, we ourselves are already part of a “future” generation that is saddled with the legislation of the past.

I didn’t vote to elect the people that passed the laws that enacted things like the income tax, social security, and medicare, yet I am impacted by those laws every other week when I send a nice chunk of the money I have worked for to the federal government to blow a good chunk of on stupid, wasteful spending.

The biggest problem with this is that I have no way to go back in time to see how things were before income tax, social security, and medicare were enacted.

Is the country a better place with these things in place? I’ll never know firsthand and for sure, will I? Well, at least not until one of us builds a time machine and starts selling tickets.

Just as I am sure that a baby born tomorrow will feel taxed without representation when they are forced to have healthcare coverage whether they like it or not when they roll off mommy and daddy's plan at the young age of 26, I sit here today, feeling that I was taxed without representation when the income tax, social security and medicare were passed long before I was born.

With More Workers Planning To Never Retire, It Is Time To Reform Social Security

You’re going to have to keep working, America! At least longer than you had planned, anyway. A recent survey found that one in five Americans now say they plan to never retire.

While some of that 20% is surely the people like me who just don’t plan to stop working at any point as long as they can help it, I am sure there is a good percentage that are not going to be working straight to the grave by choice.

With a growing number of Americans facing this same choice, or fate, maybe it is time for us to take a good, long, hard look at our socialist retirement system.  

By the time I am at retirement age, there will be huge segments of the population that will not be able to survive on the gub’ment checks alone, and will be forced to keep working. What’s wrong with that? Well, the way the socialist retirement system is currently set up, the more you earn in a year that you receive benefits, the less of the social security money you paid into the socialist system you get to keep. You can even earn so much in a year that you get absolutely no social security money at all.

I hope to be in a spot where I have this problem one day, but I am also going to be really pissed off that all of the money I paid into social security over the course of my life will not be making its way back to me, which was the fundamental promise of the program.

Regardless of where I may end up in the year 2041 (the year the socialists want me to retire, at least for now, anyway), I really think now is the time to reconsider all of this socialist retirement program craziness.

Perhaps there was a time in this country where we needed to ensure that people retired by penalizing them for earning money once they reached social security age, but I think the landscape of America, her economy, the world’s economy, and life here on planet Earth have all changed so much that we need to rethink this antiquated nonsense about incentivizing people to stop working when they get to a certain age.

I am paying money into Social Security right now, but if I choose to keep working, especially if I am in a spot where I continue to earn more and more with each passing year as long as I am of sound enough mind and body, I will be earning the most in my lifetime, right at the time that I am supposed to start getting back all of the money that I will have paid into Social Security for 52 ½ years.

The more I earn, the less I get back, so how much is that going to suck? I get it – once I’m destitute or disabled, and what not, it will be money off of which I can live, but let’s say for instance, I keep working, keep earning money, keep living life like I am planning to do right up until my number is up (it does happen, people)… I may be in a spot where I don’t ever get a dime of MY social security money back. And despite what the government and all of those liberal politicians out there want us to believe, it is MY money, not theirs. That means I will have been one huge benefactor to the U.S. government and its socialist Social Security retirement program.

I get that most of you are going to retire – some of you may even take the hit financially to retire early – and more power to you – but me, the crazy nut-job who wants to keep working ponders….shouldn’t I have a choice? Shouldn’t I have some other option rather than giving all of this money to the socialists in Washington, DC. Especially when you consider the very real possibility that I may get only 85 cents on the dollar back if I actually do stop working, and possibly, no cents on the dollar back if I actually do keep working? Don’t penalize me for working, America! In what world does that make sense?

An Important Update From The Social Security Administration

The U.S. Social Security Administration has fantastic news! Straight from the insert that should have arrived with your annual statement (wonder what it costs to print and mail all of those instead of posting them online), the Social Security Administration is happy to report that by the time those of us in our 30s go to retire, we have the prospect of getting up to 78% of the benefits that we are supposed to be getting! Isn't that fantastic news?!

That means that for every $1,000 that we are supposed to get, in essence, for every $1,000 that people on Social Security are getting now, we are going to possibly get up to $780! So, when we go to retire, we just need to come up with the other $220 somewhere to make up for the $220 that was stolen from us and given to today's retirees!

Given these revelations, how about we be allowed to keep $220 of our $1,000 to invest for ourselves? Go ahead and ask the Social Security Administration that, and watch them just smile and laugh at you, crazy little taxpayer. You can't take care of yourself without big government! Why, that's just crazy. If they let you keep your $220, they'd have to cut benefits to people on Social Security today, and that just wouldn't be fair at all to them.

The burden of benefits being cut is reserved for those of you retiring after 2041, silly goose. The Social Security Administration is just going to hold their breath, close their eyes, and hope that there is some miracle between now and 2041 that will magically occur so that we can get our full benefits. Great plan, folks!

I have a fantastic idea! Why don't we put the idiots in government in charge of all of the banks and large industrial manufacturers in the land to ensure that nothing goes wrong with our pseudo-capitalist system. Oops - am I too late to stop that? Or even better, let's take our very health and well-being and let them tax us even further so they can provide us with a universal healthcare plan (I'm not making that up - there are bills in the congress right now that are going to tax you on the health insurance your employer provides to pay for health insurance for those who aren't working - a tax on families making under $250,000 a year - breaking a certain promise from a certain someone who just happens to be the leader of the free world right now). We're going to have to sit back, watch, and see what passes and what gets vetoed.

In fact, with Taxington, D.C. doing so well with managing our retirement fund, why not let them handle every aspect of our lives?

Your Tax Dollars At Work...

With such a big debate constantly raging about who tax cuts benefit and how much things like the War on Terror or Katrina Relief cost, I think we as Americans fail to look at, analyze, and complain about how much of our tax money is wasted on the smaller, day to day projects that add up to far more money than any of these single-ticket large budget items.

The Department of the Interior spent $63,000,000 to consolidate 16 financial systems into one, but the project has failed and will be restarted from square one.

The Department of Homeland Security spent $104,000,000 on an infrastructure upgrade that did not meet federal law requirements.

The Department of Defense has spent $264,000,000 on their online travel booking system, a project that is currently four years behind schedule.

The FBI spent $170,000,000 on a web-based case management system that has failed to work properly and is also being restarted from square one.

The Transportation Security Administration spent $834,000,000 on their infrastructure modernization, but the project has never yielded the results they were looking for, and they, too, are starting over.

And lastly, our friends at the Federal Aviation Administration have spent $11,400,000,000 (yes, $11.4 billion) on 16 separate improvement projects, 12 of which are behind schedule, and one of which is currently 13 years behind schedule.

When It's 2010, 2015, & 2050...

When it’s 2010, the average life expectancy of men turning 65 will be 81.4 years, while women turning 65 in 2010 will live to 84.1 years.

Mean household income, which is $92,553 today, will get up to $113,361 in 2010 and $133,831 in 2015.

Americans’ taxable payroll which is at $4.7 trillion today will go up to $5.4 trillion in 2010 and $6.1 trillion in 2015.

The U.S. GDP which is at $12.1 trillion today will shoot up to $13.9 trillion in 2010 and $15.7 trillion in 2015.

Today, Social Security revenue is 12.73 cents per $1 of taxable payroll with 11.05 cents of revenue being paid out and 1.68 cents of revenue being put into the surplus fund. In 2010, Social Security revenue will go up to 12.83 cents per $1 of taxable payroll with 11.34 cents being paid out and only 1.49 cents being put away. By 2015, Social Security revenue will reach 12.95 cents per $1 of taxable income with 12.26 being paid out and only 0.69 cents being put away.

Today, U.S. unemployment is at 5.25% and is expected to go down to 5.21% in 2010 and 5.20% in 2015.

The U.S. population, at 288 million people today, will go up to 309 million in 2010, 323 million in 2015, and reach 421 million in 2050.

Within the U.S. population, people over the age of 65 make up 12.4% today, will make up 13.0% in 2010, make up 14.5% in 2015 and make up 20.7% in 2050.

So what else is in store for 2050?

According to Elizabeth Gardner from Financial Planning Magazine:

• There will be "solar" paint with embedded semiconductor particles that can power the electronic devices that are painted with it
• Wearable electronic devices will run on power generated by the wearer’s skin (a process patented by Microsoft in 2004 that will help the company reach $1.4 trillion in market value by 2050)
• People of two or more races will be so common in the U.S. that the Census Bureau will consider dropping the "race" question from the census (the CB will actually drop the question sometime after 2100)
• Printable transistors will be woven into clothing so that people can sell commercial time on their clothing to advertisers
• Distance learning will replace institutions of learning like Harvard for the most part (where annual tuition will be $320,000 in 2050) and individual instructors who teach students all over the world remotely will become the new icons of learning
• California will be forced to institute once again an English-only policy for official city and state signage as ethnically-centered populations have resulted in entire cities having official signs in only that city’s most popular language
• Human tissue, bones and organs will be custom-made using devices that build three-dimensional structures of living cells, revolutionizing prosthetics and the plastic and restorative surgery industries
• The penny will finally be officially eliminated by congress, but other cash and coin in the U.S. will still be around for private, in-person transactions, while a new form of currency that is worldly universal for use over the Internet and electronic shopping methods will have been popularized and replace the U.S. dollar as the defacto standard for the world’s currency
• Land-fill mining companies will be becoming popular, mining old landfills for metals, minerals and other materials whose natural resources have been exhausted
• The youngest baby boomer will be 86, the oldest 104
• Books will be a retro luxury much like vinyl records are today with some pretty common books by today’s standards being displayed in museums while book-binding will become a well-to-do hobby like home wine-making or beer-brewing is today
• To deal with seething social unrest caused by an excess of single men, China will offer attractive financial packages to Chinese girls adopted buy U.S. families to get them to come back to China
• There are 800 million cars on the world’s roads today, but there will be 3.25 billion by 2050