From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 12:05:44 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Pappieren, bitte! (and Taxes, National Debt)
Message-ID: <ae3f5aed030210049231@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 5:38 PM 8/20/96, Stephen Cobb wrote:
>At 05:32 PM 8/19/96 -0400, you wrote:
>>It sounds unfair, for sure. However, the whole thing is a fraud based
>>upon a myth. FICA witholding is NOT credited to an individual's account,
>>or even to Social Security benefits in general. By statutory law, all
>>such receipts go into the Treasury's general fund.
>>
>>So, they are NOT "social security contributions". Period.
>>
>Very true...what I am saying is that, as far as my reading goes, LEGAL
>aliens are going to be required to pay social security "taxes" while not
>having any "entitlement" in return. They pay income taxes and get certain
>things, like law and order, in return. They will be paying soc sec money to
>the government without getting anything in return. This sounds not only
>unfair but wrong, part of an isolationist, "we killed the natives so this
>land is our land and the rest of you f@*k-off" revival that includes the
>recent posting about requiring proof of citizenship before issuing drivers
>licenses.

Not only will they not be legally able to drive, but as we all have been
discussing, driver's licenses are the de facto forms of identification
demanded by most merchants, most airlines, etc.

I think the "no driver's licenses to illegal aliens" makes a certain kind
of sense, though. (Not that I don't have some compassion for them, being an
open borders advocate.) If the State gives official documents to illegal
aliens, what's the point of their being classified as illegal aliens?

Ditto for the various taxes, income or SS or property or whatever. If the
State says to someone, "OK, you don't have to pay taxes because you're an
illegal alien," the chaos that would follow is clear.

Employers cannot withold taxes (income, state, SS) from some employees and
not from others.

(Of course, employers are expected to get a SS number from all employees,
so, in theory, illegal aliens would be unable to work without one....)

One final note on the Social Security mess. Not only is it not a true
insurance plan, with contributions being invested in a fund of some sort,
it is much worse than this. Contributions are sent immediately into the
"general fund," to be spent on B-2 bombers, new administrative buildings,
salaries of government workers, pork for Congressvarmints, Seawolf
submarines, space stations, welfare payments, foreign aid to Israel and
Egypt, and so on and so forth. What the govenment does is to send an
"I.O.U." to the Social Security people, promising to someday make good on
the money already spent.

Distressingly, but not surprisingly, these I.O.U.s are *NOT* counted as
part of the National Debt. Thus, the national debt is much worse than the
$5 trillion or so it is officially estimated to be.

One estimate I have seen places the overall national debt, counting
obligations and promised payments, at $20 trillion, or four times the
official number. And it is still increasing every year. To see how large
this is, there are 100 million taxpayers in the U.S., roughly. This means
each of these taxpayers has an average indebtedness of $200,000. Most
American households do not have this amount of money in total net worth,
obviously. Thus, they "owe" much more than they are worth.

Obviously enough, the portion of this debt is not distributed uniformly
amongst households, or won't be if it is ever collected. But you get the
drift. The country has been spending far more than it has been taking in
for many years, and is far worse shape than "official" figures about the
National Debt would tend to suggest.

Neither Dole nor Clinton appear to want to talk about this, both having
done their parts to make the situation what it is today.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
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