I'm Wealthy! You Can't Tax ME!!

Just overheard this... kinda proud of the co-worker.  This was following a meeting where a woman got up and told us that in 2016, Social Security was going into the red, meaning that the Social Security trust fund was going to be paying out more money than it was taking in. 

Doctor: ...the chicky was saying that everybody pays 6.5% into Social Security trust fund who makes over $200,000 a year.  But what she didn't say is that most of us are self-employed, so we have to pay 6.5% as employers and 6.5% as employees.  So she was trying to make it sound like people who make $200,000 a year or more aren't paying their fair share, but we're paying 13%, double our fair share!

Co-worker: If you lower that threshold, then you put the burden on the poorest people who are already struggling.


Silence.
You could hear Doctor trying to make an argument that would win over Co-worker.  And then Doctor realized that he wasn't going to win this argument.  Co-worker walked away.

Doctor: ...anyway....


Just in case you were wondering...

When pressed, the woman in our meeting continually said that people would need to be taxed in order to make Social Security not spend more than it takes in (weird how that is the only answer, no matter what the Republicans would like to tell us about cutting programs and costs and spending... the ONLY way to bring in more money is to actually bring in more money).   Nobody wants their benefits cut.  Nobody wants their mother's benefits cut.  So more money needs to come in.  Currently, everyone who earns a wage gets taxed on their wages, which goes into the trust fund. Plus, anyone who makes (she couldn't remember, but guessed) $160,000 a year or more in wages pays an additional 6.5% on their wages. **I use italics there because there are many ways to get around that "wages" part. For example, Steve Jobs quite famously only made $1 in wages annually while he worked at Apple. The remainder of his Millions was made in stock options, gifts, rebates, bonuses, stipends, and other words that would automatically exclude the huge amount of money he used to live off of from taxation. He is not the only wealthy person to do this, so when I hear that people making $160,000 are being taxed on their "wages", that doesn't mean much to me.  The math here is that taxes typically take about 30% of your wages, which is about $53,333 for somebody making $160,000 (that person's tax burden is my annual income). If you increase that to include the Social Security tax (39.5%, to be more fair to Richie Rich), then that individual would actually have $96,800 to spend annually after all taxes were paid. When was the last time you made $96,800? Even before taxes?**  But she was pretty clear that if Social Security was going to continue to operate, and there was little question that it would, it was going to be necessary to raise taxes on somebody so that more money could be coming in.  Yes, there were other options in the works, but it all really boiled down to taxing people.  And this fuckstick doctor, who owns horses and multiple houses, is bellyaching about how he's paying more than his fair share.

Okay, doc, if you agree that every other day than tax day, I pay more than my fair share in stress, work hours, depression, worry, dietary neglect because I can't afford healthy food, future diseases and the inability to receive health care because I can't afford it, as well as all of those things on my wife and kids... If you agree that we pay more than you do every day of the year, quite often more than double our fair share, I will agree that, on tax day, you are paying more than your fair share because you are self employed on your $200,000 a year wages.  If you agree that 364 days of the year my family is getting ass-fucked to the point of illness and death, I will agree that 1 day a year you have the unpleasant task of writing a check.