Entitlements is not a 4 letter word

If you are making less than $106,800.00 a year then you are disproportionately paying for entitlements that you count on being there for your retirement or if you should become disabled.  Without a doubt the wealthiest 2% are set for any eventuality that comes their way but these are entitlements for which you were required to make contributions and therefore should not be discarded by the weasels in Washington today. To take your money with the promise of future benefits then not deliver is fraud and the only reason that Washington thinks of these entitlements as part of the spending problem is due to their mismanagement of the budgets since the Reagan Administration.  Do not misconstrue what I am saying here – this is a history lesson not a call for a Balanced Budget Amendment.

The people we sent to Washington decided to borrow money from the surpluses that our entitlements were generating and now do not want to levy the needed taxes to repay those loans. In lieu of repayment they want to retroactively change the terms of those loans and accuse us of being some kind of mythical welfare queen/king or malcontent.

To help with the problems with which these entitlements are saddled we need to understand that we have already paid for them outside of our Federal Income Tax responsibilities and the funds belong to us and were entrusted to the government so that games that are played on Wall Street would not negatively impact a secure future.

First – collect more from those making more than $106,800 a year. This can be done at a reduced rate and without an employer matching over that amount as to not further chill an already cold jobs market.

Per the AFL-CIO’s Pay Watch the average salary and bonus of the S&P 500 CEOs is $1,345,402.00 which is an hourly rate of $646.83 or $153.58 per hour 24-7. For comparison’s sake the poor shlub making $106,800 per year would only be making $12.19 per hour 24-7. At the CEO’s rate he would be done making any contributions to Social Security and Medicare before the end of the first month. 

“In 2010, Standard & Poor's 500 Index company CEOs received, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation— a 23 percent increase in one year.[1] Based on 299 companies’ most recent pay data for 2010, their combined total CEO pay of $3.4 billion could support 102,325 median workers’ jobs.” http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

 

Using numbers reported by Forbes the average compensation for the top 500 averaged $8,000,000 which means by lunchtime on the third working day of 2009 the CEO has stopped all contributions to Social Security and Medicare. Is there any wonder why these essential programs are being starved to death as compensation continues to grow at the higher end of the scale and not so much at the lower end?

Special Report What The Boss Makes Scott DeCarlo, 04.28.10, 06:00 PM EDT Our analysis of executive pay shows which big bosses made the most and which deserved what they made. In total, these 500 executives earned $4 billion in 2009, which averages out to $8 million apiece. http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/27/compensation-chief-executive-salary-leadership-boss-10-ceo-compensation-intro.html

Second – do not vote for anyone that would fraudulently take away from you what you have already paid for when they refuse to fix a problem instead of killing your benefits off.