Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

My life goals have never included making a lot of money… and I’ve certainly succeeded in that regard. Yet I do consider myself rich. Not Wall Street rich, but rich in the modest sense of being middle-class and able to make ends meet.

It’s not my good looks that puts me in this lucky zone, but one particular public asset that has long been serving the common good for decades, lifting millions of workaday Americans to some decent level of shared prosperity: Social Security.

Plutocratic elites and their political puppets constantly wail that Social Security is a socialist scam, a wasteful giveaway to old people. But regular folks know that’s hokum, since nearly all of us pay into the plan every month of our working lives. In short, it’s our money!

Moreover, each of our Social Security accounts steadily build up. The most valuable financial asset for 9 out of 10 American families, is not their houses or Aunt Tillie’s will — it’s their Social Security holdings. Even for rock-solid, middle-class families, Social Security provides for about a third of their total lifetime wealth.

When right-wingers screech that “fiscal prudence” demands they slash the program’s benefits, that’s bank-robber code for looting wealth you’ve banked for years in this people’s retirement system. There is absolutely no excuse for such thievery.

Especially since an honest, fair, and simple adjustment would keep the program fully funded in perpetuity. If billionaires and other extremely wealthy Americans paid Social Security taxes at the same rate the rest of us do, a study found, we wouldn’t just be able to continue the program. We’d be able to increase the benefits.

Rather than letting gabillionaires like Elon Musk put practically none of their massive incomes into this egalitarian effort to provide a decent retirement for all, make them pay Social Security taxes exactly like regular workers do.

The post Elon Musk Should Pay the Same Social Security Tax That You Do appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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