A little further down in this section you can read, Scam Alert: Watch Out For "Ownership Society" And "Investor Class". This is an interesting post and the comments are equally interesting.
While I was reading the post and comments an interesting thought pop-ed into my head. Why are young Americans under the age of twenty-five such chumps? If you are under twenty-five you might already be thinking--a curse word. But the simple reality is you are going to be paying social security income taxes at dramatically higher rates for the next major fraction of your lives. And, inspite of this harsh reality you are not VOTING.
When it comes to Social Security here is one scenario I could envision; a dramatic increase in the Social Security payroll taxes for individuals and corporations alike. Not only can I envision the percentage rate rising, but also the upper band or maximum wage amount being taxed. In other words, instead of the current 6.2 percent of income; an individual might expect to be paying 7.5 percent of income (in the not so distance future). And, it is not unreasonable to think that the band on the maximum amount of income taxed could explode up from the current $87,900 to say $150,000. You can say what you want or think what you want, but it is a simple reality that something like this is going to take place. The money to pay the bills has to come from somwhere. And these higher rates will occur because the people receiving these benefits do vote and they will continue to vote this issue for a long time.
I guess most young people don't vote because they think it won't make much of a difference. But if they looked at an issue like this it might get them to start thinking about how not voting is in fact going to affect their financial future. Most young people I talk to do not care about Social Security because they do not believe they will ever receive a Social Security retirement check. What they are failing to consider is how much Social Security tax they could be paying to support the “baby boomer generation”. They simply have not given it much thought.
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