Subject: RE: Values: SS is Anti-Family & Anti-Parenting
From: Walter Hart
>Any reform that retains a pay-as-you-go system of benefits >funded by payroll taxes on the earnings of labor alone is anti->family.
I think it is unfair to refer to the current system as anti-family. The benefits are indeed skewed TO THE BENEFIT of married persons and those couples with children. It may not be the best system, or the one we want to keep, but indeed is not anti-family IMHO.
>Thus whereas childless persons will likely be better off in >their retirement because they have used their money for private >investment rather than child-rearing, they will benefit from >the investment parents have made in children who pay payroll >taxes.
If the point is that 'people' can do better by investing their FICA taxes on their own, couldn't childless persons do even better also? And didn't their payroll taxes therefore 'benefit' other people's (maybe now dead) children? Most people don't look at children as simply a 'consumer' item or an 'investment'. Indeed, they see them as part of the meaning of life. SS reform won't make a big difference there.
And though they don't get a deduction for children on FICA taxes, they indeed do on their income taxes. How many other 'costs' in life are reduced for those who have children? Most parents make their decision to have children knowing that 'fact'.
