Claiming that “something needs to be done–and fast” to save Social Security, Parade magazine’s Gary Weiss (11/22/09) suggests a downside to the idea of raising the ceiling on taxed income, so that income above the current $106,800 would be subject to the Social Security tax: “Raising the cap is popular among Social Security reformers but would increase the tax burden on the middle class, since more of their income would be subject to the tax. ” (By contrast, “Raising the payroll tax rate would disproportionately affect lower-income workers.”)
According to the Census Bureau, less than 5 percent of individuals over the age of 15 in the U.S. have incomes exceeding $100,000 a year. That’s a peculiar definition of “the middle class.”
If Weiss truly believes that “experts agree that the longer we wait, the more difficult it will be to solve the systemâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s financial ills,” he ought to read Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot’s Social Security: The Phony Crisis.
By “middle class”, maybe Weiss means those who live in the middle of exclusive suburban enclaves.
What do you think?
Uh, “Social Security: The Phony Crisis” was first published in 1999 and last revised, as far as I can tell, in 2001. He did write a similar op-ed in the Washington Post in 2005 but what does he think about the status os Social Security today, given the current economic climate and the outrageous debt the nation has accumulated in the last 8 years?
Here’s what Dean Baker has to say about the Parade piece:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=11&year=2009&base_name=parade_magazines_propaganda_pa
Based on my tenuous grasp of modern lexicons, class has less to do with a percentage of the population than the role of that population in society. So it doesn’t break down by thirds.
Knowing that, we seem to be missing the bigger story here. The middle-class of the United States, by their definition, is incredibly tiny!
I’m with LT. Parade may be using the socialist definition of “middle class”, the people between the richest 1% and those of us who are supposed to make our livings by serving them.
Suggested title for a new look &/or book: Embourgeoisement: The Myth of the Middle Class.
Maybe you want to listen up:
Nomi Prins, author of “It Takes a Pillage” interviewed by Sen. Bernie Sanders
http://www.booktv.org/Program/11085/After+Words+Nomi+Prins+author+of+quotIt+Takes+a+Pillagequot+interviewed+by+Sen+Bernie+Sanders.aspx
I think LT above makes the real point: that the middle class has all but disappeared in the USA. A family of 4 finds it difficult to live the way their predecessors did in the 1950s on less than $100k. So the rest of us are “working class.” I’ll sign up for that; when’s the revolutuion>
Yes the classes are like a pyramid, with a tiny upper class (far less than one percent), a small middle class (people like ceos of mid-sized companies, partners in large law practices, etc.), and a cast lower (working) class. Hints that you are lower class: 1. there is a person you think of as your boss. 2. You are not a major or sole owner of your place of employment. 3. You don’t feel like you have a meaningful individual voice in your government, even at a local level. 4. You have a job, ot a business. If more than 1 of these is true, you are most likely lower class.