Rule of law requires a strong government. Government requires taxes to function. All I ever hear from the right is smaller government, smaller government, less taxes, less taxes. This is fine to a point, but there is a limit to this thinking. At some point the government becomes too small and too weak. I agree we're nowhere near that point, but there is a limit to that type of thinking as these two countries illustrate.
I am however still waiting for an answer to my second question...please someone give me an example of the country with a smaller government, lower taxes and a thriving economy with high per capita income. I just want one example.
The closest I can come up with is Switzerland, but they have compulsory health insurance (very similar to Obamacare), compulsory military service, and they spend virtually nothing on defense so nearly all tax revenues collected can go towards domestic policies. I don't think anyone could rightfully call them more libertarian than the US.
You dont explain why another country has to be shown to you with those features in order to justify a smaller government. There are no countries like ours. There are no constitutions like ours. There are no countries as rich as ours - although that is rapidly changing due to the thought that we should have a bigger and bigger government.
You have the burden of proof on your side of the argument to justify a larger government than devised by the constitution. I dont think anyone has said that we should eliminate government to the point where it cant enforce our rights or to protect us.
You dont explain why another country has to be shown to you with those features in order to justify a smaller government. There are no countries like ours. There are no constitutions like ours. There are no countries as rich as ours - although that is rapidly changing due to the thought that we should have a bigger and bigger government.
You have the burden of proof on your side of the argument to justify a larger government than devised by the constitution. I dont think anyone has said that we should eliminate government to the point where it cant enforce our rights or to protect us.
:agree: Precisely. The key is to minimize the impact of government, while still providing the rule of law, and necessary (and ONLY *necessary*) functions/governance. We are so far away from that vision of our founding fathers, that it's just crazy.
Luis
Wielding the Hammer of Thor first requires you to lift and carry the Hammer of Thor. - Bigslug
How does the constitution "allow" for the growth of government except for the defense of the country? Your view is of a government that exceeds its constitutional role.
I don't think that anyone is saying that bigger government is better than smaller government. Neither is always the right answer. What is needed is the right sized government. At any given time that may imply that government must get bigger or government must get smaller.
As a country grows and an economy becomes more complex it is natural that the size of the government should increase along with the economy. The beauty of the constitution isn't that it guarantees small government but that it allows the government to grow and adapt as necessary to changing external conditions. A stagnant government is a failed government. Only a government that can adapt to changing times is one that will be successful over long periods of time. It could be argued that the problem with our government isn't that it has become too big, but that it has become too slow and poorly adapted to the rapid pace of technological and economic change. If government can't keep up with the pace of economic growth, economic growth is likely to slow to the pace of government.
Now there's a theory of government I'm not familiar with. Government expands and contracts with the economy's up and downs. Sure is original. So right now, in the middle of a serious recession, all government should shrink? Sure don't see any evidence of that. I guess that, according to your theory, now is the time to seriously reduce government, whatever that means, as provided for in the Constitution, whatever that means. It's not easy keeping up with your twists and turns.
Recessions and even depressions are relatively temporary states of an economy, but large scale growth and technological change are not. True economic growth is largely driven by the creation of completely new industries and the development of new industries involves new challenges and conflicts. You don't need many laws when your economy consists largely of subsistence agriculture, but as an economy evolves to higher levels of complexity and you start to build railroads, telegraph networks, factories, shipping ports, electrical grids, telephone lines, an automobile industry, a petrochemical industry, a nuclear power industry, finance and securities trading, computers, the internet, biotechnology, etc. the government must grow and evolve as well.
Let's take biotechnology as a recent example where we're still figuring out what new laws and regulations we may need. Should I be allowed to patent your DNA? How about clone you? Do I need your permission? How about cloning myself? How about creating new embryos in a lab to farm stem cells for research? Can I create genetically engineered crops and freely release them into the wild? How about genetically engineered animals? What if those animals are invasive or dangerous? Do I have to tell you the food you're buying has been genetically modified? If my patented genetically modified seed drifts into your land can I sue you for royalties? No laws addressed any of these questions before the industry started to grow. Should we just throw up our hands and say "the government is too big, we can't afford to regulate the biotech industry, let them do whatever they want"? What do you think?
The questions you pose have nothing to do with the size of government. The simple fact that modern technology may raise a few legal questions regarding patents and cloning, or whatever, is not related to the size of government. A smaller, more efficient government can easily absorb these problems much better than a bloated bureaucracy of duplication, paper passing, and confusion. And at a much lesser cost to the taxpayer. The legal system would be at work also, specifically the court system and SCOTUS.
One of key concepts of freedom is a minimum of government intervention. Obamacare is a prime example of government physically expanding in size and in scope, and inappropriately, in clear violation of the Constitution, and elected officials who passed a very major law of such complexity that no one seems to have a clear handle on it, never studied it, and never understood it. One with loopholes galore for political reasons only, one that has an eerie Kafkaesque aura to it, and will further stress our economy.
It is not economics that calls for larger and more invasive governement, it is the relentless drum roll of the far left who believe in an ever expanding government, more and more and more government control and irresponsible government spending, steering our nation closer and closer to the edge of disaster.
The free market will resolve most problems with a minimum of laws, in order to encourage true economic growth, benefitting the most citizens. A good example of that would be the goal of energy independence, and developing our natural resources in the area of oil, natural gas, and, yes, even coal and solar. Our economy is being throttled by its dependence on foreign oil. Let the free market forces go to work by eliminating government's chokehold on our resources.
Expanding and contracting government in response to economic conditions? Nonsense.
Not a single one of the questions raised in my previous post are dealt with in laws on the books when the questions arose. The bottom line is that the new technology requires new laws and regulations which by definition expands the size and scope of government. The same applies to any new industry. It may be that many industries do not need many laws and others need a lot. If you look at the history of this country, every new set of government regulations or laws resulted from major conflicts that the "free market" and current laws could not handle. Abusive labor practices lead to child labor laws, minimum wage, and other labor protections. Deplorable conditions in the meat packing industry and the prevalence of snake oil salesmen lead to the introduction of the FDA and the regulation of food and drugs. Massive pollution of air, lakes and rivers (see Cuyahoga river) lead to the founding of the EPA.
While freedom is important, so is the protection of rights. When living alone on a deserted island, freedom is a simple concept. However in a densely populated and complex society, far too often your freedom infringes on my rights and vice versa. My freedom to play loud music at all hours of the night infringes upon your right to a good night's sleep. My freedom to dispose of my trash in the cheapest way possible (burning it in my back yard) infringes upon your right to not have to breath toxic smoke while sitting in your back yard. If you look at the majority of laws and regulations, at the heart their main purpose is to mediate situations where rights or freedoms of different groups conflict.
I disagree that the free market is capable of dealing with these types of conflicts efficiently if at all. A free market is good for one and only one thing...maximizing individual profits given a set of rules. Those profits do not and will not benefit most citizens unless the system (laws and regulations) are such that they should. If I can profit by infringing upon your rights and freedoms or harming you in some way I will do so unless there is a law preventing me from doing so. In order for a "free market" to be efficient, even in theory, all externalities must be accounted for. The failure of most economics education is the failure to stress this very important caveat.
If I can legally profit $1 by causing $2 of harm to you I will do so even though it is not "efficient" for the overall market. That $2 cost to you is the externality. Without government intervention or some other legal or economic mechanism for accounting for that cost, all you can do is suck it up and deal with it.
Passing new regulatory laws really only involves 1) passage of said laws and 2) dealing with it in the courts. It does NOT require creating a new bureaucracy for every new type of regulation. 90% of what you mention above can be handled through civil litigation which has a MINIMAL impact on the size of government. ie. your $1 worth of profit mentioned above will quickly disappear when I sue you for the $2 worth of harm it did to me... trust me, you'll quit that practice pretty quickly.
Luis
Wielding the Hammer of Thor first requires you to lift and carry the Hammer of Thor. - Bigslug
Getting back to the subject of this thread, rather than dilly dally with local zoning and use ordinances, I found this chart on the Wall Street Journal. The source is the IRS for the year 2008, and completely and totally disputes Buffett and Obama. Sure, capital gains, etc., are capped at 15% but the overall picture, the bottom line, is that the rich do pay a higher rate of tax than anyone else.
This Buffett thing is all politics, and, as usual with liberals, its basic premise in not true. Click on image to enlarge.
Note line 53 the tax rate is 26% up to $175K ($87.5K MFS) or 28% above that.
There are deductions of course and they do change the net rate of course but then everyone has some sort of deductions which change the net rates.
Personally I think IF the govt is going to tax income then everyone who earns an income should pay something. Earn $100, pay 1/2 of 1% and go up from there. As it is now there is a decent sized number who don't even pay payroll taxes by the time their income tax return is figured in, and a larger portion who do not pay federal income taxes.
Not if you include payroll taxes and that was buffet's point. You have to add 15% to everyone under $100k and 15% to the first $100k for everyone else. When you look at ALL taxes paid it is true. Notice that even in this graph it shows that people over $1M pay less than people between $500k-$1M. Bottom line, there is no better country in the world to be a Millionaire except for possibly Monaco (assuming you can afford the $5M apartment and you trust the French military to protect you).
What about the ten percent or so who do not pay PAYROLL taxes according to the IRS?
The real issue is we have gone from some 18% not paying income taxes to 47% or so, and that in MY lifetime.
Lawsuits are a very inefficient means of dealing with conflicts, but yes you could try. However proving the damages and that they were caused by an activity I didn't have a right to do is not always easy. If for example I own a mine upstream of your brewery and we both have equal rights to use the river as we please (there are no laws against dumping in the river), you would be hard pressed to stop me from dumping may tailing into the river even if it made your beer taste terrible. I could come up with any number of examples where individuals well within their own rights either intentionally or more often unintentionally cause economic harm to others.
An example from growing up, there was a company that bought a plot of land with the intent of building a popcorn factory in town. The problem was it was close to one of the wealthier neighborhoods. Everyone who lived within half a mile or so of the proposed location got up in arms over the prospect of the damage to their property values caused by the persistent smell of popcorn. There were easily a few hundred homes that may have cumulatively lost a million or two dollars in property value if the factory got built. In such a conflict who should win? The people who were already there who's homes would lose value, or the new company coming in to build a new factory and create a few dozen jobs?
Your dumping in the river would be reducing the value of your neighbor's property and legal right to the water which passes through. You would also be trespassing with your waste onto every property downstream. Which would all be worthy of a civil or criminal action. Lawsuits like this would only have needed to occur once or twice before you would need insurance - much like liability insurance - in order to protect yourself from lawsuits. The insurance company would either charge you astronomical rates unless you were willing to clean up your act. The free market prevails.
One could argue externalities till your blue in the face. A better argument would likely involve priorities. In any event it's all opinion, it seems to me, and lots of blah blah. We certainly don't need to be lectured like high school freshmen.
Back again to the subject. Wealthy people like Buffett don't pay SS taxes or any social taxes unless they're on someone's payroll. But neither, then, are they eligible for any benefits. But, they are usually subject to the effects of the corporate tax. Corporations pay taxes on income. That income is then paid to shareholders in the form of dividends, with a 15% maximum tax. That same income then is subject to double taxation, a factor that's been ignored. The true tax rate on corporate profits paid out as dividends could be around50%.
To tax the wealthy for SS, medicare, medicaid, disability and all that is essentially unfair because the wealthy can never, ever benefit from these programs. To do so is simply a gross redistribution of wealth. Therefore, these taxes are not a factor in tax rate comparisons.
Sue for what? What rights of yours are being violated? Does it say in the constitution you have the right to water of a certain quality from any water body that touches your property? Who sued who when the cuyahoga river caught on fire in the 70's? Did it solve the problem or did they have to pass environmental regulations?
Free market economics say that I must maximize my own benefits, it says nothing about bothering to consider what impacts my actions might have on my neighbors.
If your impact on a neighbor costs you enough money to bankrupt you then that goes into your free market equation. You seem completely stuck in viewing this from one angle only. You have no concept of property rights because you believe that only something tangible has to be considered.
Actually I have a very strong understanding of property rights. Externalities exist when property rights are not clear or when they conflict or overlap. Rivers, lakes, the ocean, the air, wildlife, public property including parks, roads, bridges, etc. are not owned by any individual and are typically refereed to as "commons". I'm sure you have no doubt heard of "the tragedy of the commons". In the absence of laws or rules regulating the use of the commons anyone can do anything to these resources and use them how they see fit, regardless of the impact on others.
To bring this back to a subject that most of us here understand well is wildlife management. A quick google search turned up an estimate of 20 Million white tailed deer in the US. How many years to you think it would take to drop the population to next to nothing if hunting were completely unrestricted and selling the meat was completely legal? I know the majority of hunters are completely ethical and would try to voluntarily limit themselves, but what about the bad apples? We already have plenty of problems with people spotlighting deer and taking them out of season. Imagine if there were no laws to deter them? Remember what happened with the American Buffalo?
Anyway I've gotten way off on this tangent and I'll stop now. It's just a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Discussing, or even worse, practicing economics without addressing externalities (assuming they don't exist as all econ 101 classes and even most professional economic models do) is equivalent to practicing physics while ignoring friction. Sure you can do it in some simplified, idealized domains, but in real life it just doesn't work and you'll end up running into a whole mess of problems.
It's this kind of condescending posing as an intellectual elitist that I most vehemently object to. The bottom line is that you are wrong about externalities in modern economics. Externalities is a pet idea of the left which is used ad nauseum to justify bigger and bigger government, and government interference in free markets and capitalism.
I refer you to this article by two extremely well-educated economists titled "The End of the Externality Revolution".
Have you actually read the article you posted or did you just read the title and assume it proved your point? If you have read the article would you mind sending it to me because I don't want to spend $30 to buy it.
From what I can tell from the abstract it does not debunk the concept of externalities it only recognizes the limited scope of some of the economic thinkers and their failure to both recognize existing institutions that already address certain externalities and that big government institution are not the only way to deal with externalities and that they too can also fail. At the end when he mentions the "property rights revolution" he is talking about the more recent push to assign property rights to resources that were traditionally thought of as public goods. An example would be assigning property rights to existing fishermen in a fishery. This gives them a stronger incentive to protect the fishery and manage it in a sustainable way, but it also excludes others from using it. This approach can work better than government regulation in some areas but not all.
This is the conclusion of the document we're discussing:
5. Conclusions
The externalities literature spans 100 years, thousands of journal articles and more than a
few books, that collectively brought about a virtual revolution in views on market failure and the
proper role of government. This literature includes a staggering array of instances in which
authors find market failure, and a wide variety of proposed government mechanisms to be used
in correcting the market’s errant ways. The authors of this paper are as guilty as others. We
have also analyzed externalities and proposed government imposed solutions, but now wish to
repent for the sins of our youth.
Simply put, markets seldom fail because of externalities. Non-trivial externalities that
arise in the use of private goods can persist only if governments prevent markets from working.
In the absence of government impediments to market transactions, only public goods can yield
externalities that can persist, and even this case is subject to qualification. Externality may be a
term that is useful in categorizing resource allocation problems, but it adds little more.
More to the point, a great deal of public policy is inappropriately based on the externality
rationale. Neoclassical welfare economists let this genie out of the conceptual bottle. It is time
to do what we can to put it back.
In other words, externalities theory needs to be put to rest. I guess you interpret this differently. Looks clear to me, but then you seem to have other views that only you understand.
SS was doomed to "failure" from the start and the very politicians who argued to emplement it knew this. They knew that birth rates would change over the lifetime of the nation and SS and that the rates would eventually mean that there were not enough givers to support the takers.
As for the notion that the rich do not pay their "fair" share the numbers from the IRS say they have been for quite some time. The ones not paying their fair share are generally at the other end of the spectrum. Not so long ago there were some 18% of wage earners not paying federal income taxes, now this number has grown to nearly 50%. In my opinion everyone who earns a wage should pay some federal income taxes.
SS was doomed to "failure" from the start and the very politicians who argued to emplement it knew this. They knew that birth rates would change over the lifetime of the nation and SS and that the rates would eventually mean that there were not enough givers to support the takers.
As for the notion that the rich do not pay their "fair" share the numbers from the IRS say they have been for quite some time. The ones not paying their fair share are generally at the other end of the spectrum. Not so long ago there were some 18% of wage earners not paying federal income taxes, now this number has grown to nearly 50%. In my opinion everyone who earns a wage should pay some federal income taxes.
1) Disagreed. SS was designed right from the start to never fail. The age that you START earning benefits is the average age of death... and your benefits are provided by the taxes collected from everybody younger than yourself. There is no way for this to fail UNLESS YOU GIVE IT AWAY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE EARNED/PROVIDED NOTHING... which is the current problem.
2) Agreed. EVERYBODY who makes SOMETHING should pay at least SOMETHING in taxes. There should be NO free rides.
Luis
Wielding the Hammer of Thor first requires you to lift and carry the Hammer of Thor. - Bigslug
1) Disagreed. SS was designed right from the start to never fail. The age that you START earning benefits is the average age of death... and your benefits are provided by the taxes collected from everybody younger than yourself. There is no way for this to fail UNLESS YOU GIVE IT AWAY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE EARNED/PROVIDED NOTHING... which is the current problem.
Actually it was designed to have several payers for every taker, and they knew going in that sooner or later there would be less and less payers per taker.
2) Agreed. EVERYBODY who makes SOMETHING should pay at least SOMETHING in taxes. There should be NO free rides.
Luis
Someone mentioned that one way to FIX SS was to lower the disbursements to $1000 per person per month. At first glance this may seem fine. The issue is the tax rate needed to provide this payment schedule. At 20 payers per taker the tax rate aint bad, at 10 you now must tax everyone on average $100 per month.
According to some estimates... "By 2035, the ratio of potential retirees to working age persons will be 37 percent — there will be less than three potential income earners for every retiree in the population."
Replies
You dont explain why another country has to be shown to you with those features in order to justify a smaller government. There are no countries like ours. There are no constitutions like ours. There are no countries as rich as ours - although that is rapidly changing due to the thought that we should have a bigger and bigger government.
You have the burden of proof on your side of the argument to justify a larger government than devised by the constitution. I dont think anyone has said that we should eliminate government to the point where it cant enforce our rights or to protect us.
:agree: Precisely. The key is to minimize the impact of government, while still providing the rule of law, and necessary (and ONLY *necessary*) functions/governance. We are so far away from that vision of our founding fathers, that it's just crazy.
Luis
Now there's a theory of government I'm not familiar with. Government expands and contracts with the economy's up and downs. Sure is original. So right now, in the middle of a serious recession, all government should shrink? Sure don't see any evidence of that. I guess that, according to your theory, now is the time to seriously reduce government, whatever that means, as provided for in the Constitution, whatever that means. It's not easy keeping up with your twists and turns.
The questions you pose have nothing to do with the size of government. The simple fact that modern technology may raise a few legal questions regarding patents and cloning, or whatever, is not related to the size of government. A smaller, more efficient government can easily absorb these problems much better than a bloated bureaucracy of duplication, paper passing, and confusion. And at a much lesser cost to the taxpayer. The legal system would be at work also, specifically the court system and SCOTUS.
One of key concepts of freedom is a minimum of government intervention. Obamacare is a prime example of government physically expanding in size and in scope, and inappropriately, in clear violation of the Constitution, and elected officials who passed a very major law of such complexity that no one seems to have a clear handle on it, never studied it, and never understood it. One with loopholes galore for political reasons only, one that has an eerie Kafkaesque aura to it, and will further stress our economy.
It is not economics that calls for larger and more invasive governement, it is the relentless drum roll of the far left who believe in an ever expanding government, more and more and more government control and irresponsible government spending, steering our nation closer and closer to the edge of disaster.
The free market will resolve most problems with a minimum of laws, in order to encourage true economic growth, benefitting the most citizens. A good example of that would be the goal of energy independence, and developing our natural resources in the area of oil, natural gas, and, yes, even coal and solar. Our economy is being throttled by its dependence on foreign oil. Let the free market forces go to work by eliminating government's chokehold on our resources.
Expanding and contracting government in response to economic conditions? Nonsense.
Passing new regulatory laws really only involves 1) passage of said laws and 2) dealing with it in the courts. It does NOT require creating a new bureaucracy for every new type of regulation. 90% of what you mention above can be handled through civil litigation which has a MINIMAL impact on the size of government. ie. your $1 worth of profit mentioned above will quickly disappear when I sue you for the $2 worth of harm it did to me... trust me, you'll quit that practice pretty quickly.
Luis
This Buffett thing is all politics, and, as usual with liberals, its basic premise in not true. Click on image to enlarge.
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f6251.pdf
Note line 53 the tax rate is 26% up to $175K ($87.5K MFS) or 28% above that.
There are deductions of course and they do change the net rate of course but then everyone has some sort of deductions which change the net rates.
Personally I think IF the govt is going to tax income then everyone who earns an income should pay something. Earn $100, pay 1/2 of 1% and go up from there. As it is now there is a decent sized number who don't even pay payroll taxes by the time their income tax return is figured in, and a larger portion who do not pay federal income taxes.
What about the ten percent or so who do not pay PAYROLL taxes according to the IRS?
The real issue is we have gone from some 18% not paying income taxes to 47% or so, and that in MY lifetime.
Your dumping in the river would be reducing the value of your neighbor's property and legal right to the water which passes through. You would also be trespassing with your waste onto every property downstream. Which would all be worthy of a civil or criminal action. Lawsuits like this would only have needed to occur once or twice before you would need insurance - much like liability insurance - in order to protect yourself from lawsuits. The insurance company would either charge you astronomical rates unless you were willing to clean up your act. The free market prevails.
Back again to the subject. Wealthy people like Buffett don't pay SS taxes or any social taxes unless they're on someone's payroll. But neither, then, are they eligible for any benefits. But, they are usually subject to the effects of the corporate tax. Corporations pay taxes on income. That income is then paid to shareholders in the form of dividends, with a 15% maximum tax. That same income then is subject to double taxation, a factor that's been ignored. The true tax rate on corporate profits paid out as dividends could be around50%.
To tax the wealthy for SS, medicare, medicaid, disability and all that is essentially unfair because the wealthy can never, ever benefit from these programs. To do so is simply a gross redistribution of wealth. Therefore, these taxes are not a factor in tax rate comparisons.
If your impact on a neighbor costs you enough money to bankrupt you then that goes into your free market equation. You seem completely stuck in viewing this from one angle only. You have no concept of property rights because you believe that only something tangible has to be considered.
It's this kind of condescending posing as an intellectual elitist that I most vehemently object to. The bottom line is that you are wrong about externalities in modern economics. Externalities is a pet idea of the left which is used ad nauseum to justify bigger and bigger government, and government interference in free markets and capitalism.
I refer you to this article by two extremely well-educated economists titled "The End of the Externality Revolution".
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5878592
Get real. Spare us all the inaccurate blah blah. I, for one, don't want to hear it or waste my time debunking BS from the left.
This is the conclusion of the document we're discussing:
5. Conclusions
The externalities literature spans 100 years, thousands of journal articles and more than a
few books, that collectively brought about a virtual revolution in views on market failure and the
proper role of government. This literature includes a staggering array of instances in which
authors find market failure, and a wide variety of proposed government mechanisms to be used
in correcting the market’s errant ways. The authors of this paper are as guilty as others. We
have also analyzed externalities and proposed government imposed solutions, but now wish to
repent for the sins of our youth.
Simply put, markets seldom fail because of externalities. Non-trivial externalities that
arise in the use of private goods can persist only if governments prevent markets from working.
In the absence of government impediments to market transactions, only public goods can yield
externalities that can persist, and even this case is subject to qualification. Externality may be a
term that is useful in categorizing resource allocation problems, but it adds little more.
More to the point, a great deal of public policy is inappropriately based on the externality
rationale. Neoclassical welfare economists let this genie out of the conceptual bottle. It is time
to do what we can to put it back.
In other words, externalities theory needs to be put to rest. I guess you interpret this differently. Looks clear to me, but then you seem to have other views that only you understand.
As for the notion that the rich do not pay their "fair" share the numbers from the IRS say they have been for quite some time. The ones not paying their fair share are generally at the other end of the spectrum. Not so long ago there were some 18% of wage earners not paying federal income taxes, now this number has grown to nearly 50%. In my opinion everyone who earns a wage should pay some federal income taxes.
1) Disagreed. SS was designed right from the start to never fail. The age that you START earning benefits is the average age of death... and your benefits are provided by the taxes collected from everybody younger than yourself. There is no way for this to fail UNLESS YOU GIVE IT AWAY TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE EARNED/PROVIDED NOTHING... which is the current problem.
2) Agreed. EVERYBODY who makes SOMETHING should pay at least SOMETHING in taxes. There should be NO free rides.
Luis
Yes.
Someone mentioned that one way to FIX SS was to lower the disbursements to $1000 per person per month. At first glance this may seem fine. The issue is the tax rate needed to provide this payment schedule. At 20 payers per taker the tax rate aint bad, at 10 you now must tax everyone on average $100 per month.
According to some estimates... "By 2035, the ratio of potential retirees to working age persons will be 37 percent — there will be less than three potential income earners for every retiree in the population."