His plans for social security amount to essentially a massive new tax on the successful to keep FDR's system afloat:
When Obama proposes to also apply the 12.5% levy to all income above $250,000, he’s doing nothing more or less than to raise the effective marginal rate on that income from its current 33 to 35 percent, to a maximum of 47.5%. Add in his already-proposed income-tax rate increase of 4.5% for high earners, and that takes you well above a 50% marginal federal tax rate for high incomes. This is an income-tax increase, not a Social Security tax increase.
And when you add in state taxes, those earning over $250,000 will have a marginal tax rate around 60 percent. There's no point in disguising this: Obama will punish those who succeed in order to funnel benefits to those who haven't. Yes: he's a liberal. But Bush never dealt with the fiscal reality - preferring to borrow the money from the Chinese. In that sense, these hikes are Bush's hikes as well.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/06/obama-vs-the-successful/214883/
