Socialist Security: Another Program for McCain-Palin to Save Us From...

Given that the McCain-Palin campaign has deteriorated into a shabby reënactment of the Cold War and McCarthyism, perhaps the GOP will turn its sights on another manifestation of socialism in our midst: Social Security.

Today, Social Security is financed by a 12.4 percent payroll tax, the expense of which is evenly split between employers and employees or paid in full by the self-employed. To maintain the fiction that Social Security is a retirement insurance program in which contributions are linked to benefits, rather than what it is—a transfer of income from workers and the self-employed to retired people—income is taxed only up to a maximum of $68,400 [Alvin Rabushka, "Flatten the Payroll Tax—and Save the World," Hoover Digest, 1999, vol. 2].

Socialism at work: taking your hard-earned money and handing it to Grandma and Grandpa, lazy layabouts who sit around not working (and giving your kids all sorts of candy to rot their teeth to boot). Ban Social Security!

That is the McCain-Palin logic, isn't it? America doesn't believe in sharing the wealth, does it? Senior citizens will be turning out at the polls in droves to reject socialism... won't they?

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A little more on the utter speciousness of branding Barack Obama a socialist: if Obama's tax plan makes him a socialist, then so were FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan:

Obama's proposing a top marginal rate of 39% for people earning $250,000 or more. Folks, the top marginal income tax rate in the United States was 50% or (usually) higher every single year from 1932 through 1986. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.......Every. Single. Year. But maybe that's nothing more than that "pre-9/11 thinking" that the current crop of Washington scoundrels wants to banish from our skull cavities.

It was over 90% for 1944-45, and 1950 through 1963. Note that the years during which we were at war the top rate exceeded 90%. Note that we are currently involved in two wars, in massive public debt, and operating with the lowest top marginal income tax rate since before the depression.

Is it really asking too much for the people who interview the candidates to bring this up? Do these people actually think the US was "Socialist" during the entire time that we were fighting the cold war to restrain Communism? [Lee Russ, "Obama Joins Adam Smith, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and All Those Other Damned Socialists," Watching the Watchers, 2008.10.22].

Enough baloney. Send the Republicans back to Remedial Civics and Econ 101. Elect people actually connected to reality. Elect Barack Obama.