>>>>Since the excess FICA receipts are being ' saved' already, moving
them around doesn't help. For every one of those dollars that is
not used to soak up Federal deficits,
>From Michael:
>>>>I would question your assumption here. You are assuming that
the government actually needs to spend all the money that is
being used by the surplus FICA taxes.
Actually, I am not. If you had bothered to read and / or quote the next line, you would find:
>>>>"Same thing with the process of 'buying up public debt' (i.e. any dollar not used to do so, will fail to 'free' a dollar)."
That is what indeed what we will have this year with our $70 billion dollar 'surplus' due to the SS excess receipts. That $70 billion will be used to 'buy up' maturing public gov't debt, freeing that $70 billion of investment capital to seek other investments i.e. private market investments. If we were to just reduce FICA taxes to the amount required to pay current benefits, there would be a net reduction of national savings.
>>>>It is odd that when taxes are increased, the government instantly has no problem spending the money. When attempting to take money away, the assumption is that all the money being spent is on worthwhile programs.
Not at all. It is merely a political reality that cutting spending is much more difficult than cutting taxes. What the last two major income tax increases really did was to help eliminate the deficit. If you spend more than you collect in taxes, you will have a deficit, regardless of whether the spending was 'worthwhile' or not.
>>>>How about a 21st century innovation to solve this problem: take the money away from government and force them to find a way
to balance the budget.
Merely taking away the tax revenue does not do that. We have the lesson from the early 80's to show that. You keep claiming that the less money the politicians have, the less they will spend. But you have cited not a single statistic to support it. All the evidence says otherwise.
