Customer Reviews

Common Cents, Common Dreams: A Layman's Guide to Social Security Privatization

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This little book on the Social Security system should be required reading for every secondary school child. That it isn't is testament to the National Educational System's need to keep disadvantaged people in the bottom half of asset owners. The political hypocrisy on this issue is staggering. Consider that if a black man had his FICA deductions invested in the S&P 500 average for the past 50 years he would have earned an average of 13.5% per year. Compound that out for any amount of money, not to mention 12.5% of one's wages, and it adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Contrast this with the current 1-2% return from social secutiry that said man gets if he lives past 65 years old. But,.. when you consider that the average black man dies at 64, and the FICA money that has been deducted from his paycheck doesn't go to his family, but back into the pot to support elderly white women, who live the longest, then from such facts tales of racism are spun. This is the truth. We need more of it.

This is the best summary of the need for Social Security reform ever written, and it makes the case in only 49 pages. It begins from the point of view of a young family trying to get by on too little. Their lives are complicated by the incredible bite taken out of their meager paycheck by FICA, the most unfair and regressive of all taxes.

This book exposes the inherent contradiciton of the welfare state that seems to cripple those it should help the most.

Knowledge is the most important tool we have when confronting injustice. No tax scheme is more unjust than the current Social Security System that takes proportionately more from those who can afford it least and gives most to those who need it least.