“Scrapping the cap” would not keep Social Security solvent, let alone allow it to expand benefits, it’s a dishonest ploy.
▪️Social Security faces a huge projected shortfall by the 2040s of 6% of GDP. The CBO estimates scrapping the cap wouldn’t even make up 1% of GDP, nowhere close to what Bernie claims here.
▪️In order to make up for the future SS shortfall, major tax hikes are needed. To make up 6% of GDP, it would take instituting a 20% VAT (national sales tax) AND raising income taxes across the board by 10%. No politician wants to propose this and admit what it would actually take.
▪️Also, the reason there is a cap for SS is because the program was ostensibly sold as a sort of pension. You pay into the program while you’re working and then get that money back when you retire. Removing the cap is an admission that it’s really just a welfare program.
🔹Chart showing how much different tax hikes, including scrapping the cap, would reduce the SS shortfall posted in the comments.
It’s funny to see the left use the same conspiratorial rhetoric as the right did a year ago regarding the jobs numbers being downwardly revised. So many on the right, who knew nothing of how the jobs numbers are calculated or why they revise them, were convinced the downward revisions were a conspiracy to help Biden win.
If people want to have a debate about the birth death model or the survey methods, ok, but that’s not what’s happening here. Most people are under the delusion that the BLS report is the govt reporting every job created and lost, and are thus easily swayed it’s rigged when it suits their political ends.
This is almost laughingly misleading, as it leaves out everything before the letter.
▪️After being repeatedly lampooned by the Smothers Brothers over Vietnam, Johnson finally had enough. One night at 3 am he called the head of CBS William Paley, demanding that he “get those bastards off my back.”
▪️Paley then asked the heads of CBS entertainment to get them to back off of LBJ. However, instead of backing off the Smothers Brothers doubled down, booking a folk musician performing “Waist Deep,” an anti-war song about a soldier being stuck in the mud while “the big fool says to push on,” clearly a dig at LBJ.
▪️At the last minute, CBS cut the song from the pre-taped show to the outrage of the Smothers. They continued to push the boundaries off and on for the rest of his presidency, with CBS sometimes cutting segments that they thought went too far. Basically, it was a soft form of censorship.
▪️It wasn’t until Johnson made his surprise announcement not to run in 1968 ...
