Kenders' Musings

I have been going through Obama's "plan", specifically the part relating to seniors and retirement, and have found some very troubling parts that will raise costs and take away even more of our freedoms.

Specifically this;

Provide a Living Wage: Barack Obama believes that people who work full time should not live in poverty and should have the ability to save for retirement. However, for workers making the minimum wage, saving for the future is often out of reach. Before the Democrats took back Congress, the minimum wage had not changed in 10 years. Even though the minimum wage will rise to $7.25 an hour by 2009, the minimum wage’s real purchasing power will still be below what it was in 1968.As president, Obama will further raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011, index it to inflation and increase the EITC to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families out of poverty and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing – things so many people take for granted.

Emphasis Mine

So why just $9.50 an hour? If raising it to $9.50 an hour is good, then making it, say, $12.50 an hour would be even better right? I actually understand that raising the minimum wage raises prices across the board, but who cares? Let's raise the minimum wage and if prices go up across the board and put minimum wage earners back into poverty because of prices for everything going up across the board we'll just raise the minimum wage again.

Something else that bugs me is this;

Expand Retirement Savings Incentives for Working Families: Barack Obama will ensure savings incentives are fair to all workers by creating a generous savings match for low and middle-income Americans. Obama will expand the existing Savers Credit to match 50 percent of the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn under $75,000, and he will make the tax credit refundable.

Why stop at 50% of the first thousand? If saving make the country stronger, why not just make it so that whatever you save the country will match? If we match everything saved by earners that are below the poverty level we can push them out of the poverty level that much faster. Of course it bothers me that Barack Hussein Obama's mindset is such that he sees no problem treating us as children by offering to give everyone making under a set amount that saves a thousand dollars a five hundred dollar gift, but who am I to argue? We're flying headlong into a socialist government and economy, and I for one am surrendering and saying good on ya mate, and while we're at it let's look at the following bit;

Barack Obama will only advocate reforms that truly strengthen Social Security. That’s why he’ll continue his long record of opposing the privatization of Social Security, which has dominated the debate in Washington for too long. Privatization tears the fabric of Social Security – the idea of mutual responsibility – by subjecting a secure retirement to the whims of the market, and that is not an acceptable way to strengthen this program. Obama believes that the first place to look for ways to strengthen Social Security is the payroll tax system. Currently, the Social Security payroll tax applies to only the first $102,000 a worker makes.

Emphasis again mine.

First off this whole concept of "mutual responsibility" is part of the problem. We are responsible for each other, TO A POINT, and that point ends when one is capable of taking care of oneself and ones needs. If you can work get a job, even if that job is making minimum wage. Learn new skills and make yourself a more valuable worker and you will see a greater return on your work investment. Keep flipping burgers and expect to drive an expensive car and live in a big house and you are dreaming. But this is what people are expecting these days.

The second part of that is the whole $102,000 wage level that social security applies to, and I have an idea about that also.

Let's just set up the tax system in a manner that is more fair to the lower income people in this country. Let's drop all payroll taxes on people making below the poverty level, after all they need their money right? They would still be taken out, but they could get a refund at the end of the year. Let's keep taxes as they are now on people making above poverty level by double their allowance. Of course we must make the poverty level something realistic. Let's say that the poverty level is anything under full time wages at minimum wage. After all, most people that work minimum wage don't work at one job full time, as employers have made it a habit of scheduling them under the 40 hour cap to keep under the laws that apply to full time workers.

If we raise the minimum wage to something even higher (say $25.00 and hour) at the outset we could even lower the exemption level, right? But that's a chart for another day.

Now this applies differently depending on the number of people in your family. For each person in your family you get another poverty level to base your tax level on. So if you have 4 people in your family you get 6 times the poverty level before taxes kick in. (3 for head of household plus 3 other people) We should probably make it so married couples can have a special deduction. Let's say head of household gets the 3 times the poverty level and the spouse gets a 1.5 times the poverty level deduction and each child under 18 gets a poverty level deduction. So a family of four (mom, dad, two kids) would get a deduction of 6.5 times the poverty level.

So let's look at what those levels will be. At $12.50 an hour (what we should raise the minimum wage to because if 9 and change an hour is good then 12 and change an hour would be better) 40 hours a week is $500.00 a week for a single tax filer. That's twenty four grand a year before your taxes start needing to be filed and paid. Now a family of 4 could expect no tax hit until they hit $108,000 a year. Here's where the beauty of this plan really comes into focus. Anything over your allowance to double your allowance stays taxed at current rates, and anything above that could just be tax at 100%.

This has the added incentive of destroying that pesky marriage problem. The left has been bashing on family values for years now, and with the incentive to get married gone because the married couples would lose a deduction of thirty six thousand dollars a year, people would quit actually marrying each other.

Would this level the playing field or what?

So a family of four gets a deduction of one hundred eight thousand ($143,000 if they aren't married). That means they could make up to $216,000 a year ($286,000 for unmarried couples. Certainly they could happily live on that amount, and anything above it goes to the government to pay for healthcare, education, youth programs and to enforce new workplace regulations that force employers to create retirement accounts for their workers. Nobody would be making over a set amount of money, which would close the income gap between executives that run companies and bring great returns for their stockholders and the low skilled workers that make it all possible.

We could also make education costs completely deductible, so people could afford to send their children to college. This would make it economical to have more children and educate them, giving us a larger and better educated native work force.

Further, we must have the government enforced retirement plans because, quite honestly, nobody under this plan will be able to afford to invest by themselves, which means nobody is going to be getting filthy rich while other people live under the poverty level.

This plan will close the gap between rich and poor, making income more even across the levels of workers in this country, fund the government and finally put the filthy rich and powerful in their place.

We can even make a new Cabinet level to oversee this new system.

We can call it the "Security Creation Realization for the Equality of Workers and Education Department."

I even like the acronym, because it fits so well.