Michael Coburn > wrote:


>
>If there is an _HONEST_ desire to address Medicare "A" (called HI) the
>cure is simple:
>
>Whereas the benefits inure equally to all regardless of the AMOUNT of
>paid in taxes, regardless of income, and regardless of assets, then the
>Medicare tax should be assessed on _ALL_ income and not just wage income.

The benefits are not related to income, therefore the tax for them
should be related to total income? Huh?!?! IF you are going to use
this rather feeble reasoning for how the taxes should be assessed, it
would actually argue much better for a per-head tax. In fact, Congress
has already rejected that line of thinking, taxing all wage income,
not just the first dollar, or wages up to the SSWB.

>At the current 2.9% rate that will probably put the "A" fund in a
>position of large excess in that 75 year time frame.
Possibly. I wasn't able to quickly find any data on the amount of
non-wage individual taxable income. How much is it vs wage income?

>And the funds
>should be OFF BUDGET.
I agree.

>PS. We would probably need a REDUCTION in the tax rate if we were fixated
>on Medicare "A" applying the tax in a JUST manner.
Purely a value statement. Your "just" may be different from someone
else's "just". I'm sure you would strongly believe your definition to
be "right", but that doesn't make it so.
--
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