Daily Topics - Friday February 17th, 2012

"Please join us Tuesday evening February 21st as we present a very special edition of The Big Picture "Teach-In to Take Back the American Dream" sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future and Free Speech TV. Guests include: Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Robert Borosage w/Campaign for America's Future, "Patriotic Millionaire" Leo Hindery of Intermedia Partners, Heather McGhee of Demos, and Natalie Foster from Rebuild the Dream. Check your local listings...9pm ET and 11pm ET on FSTV and RT.
Anything Goes on Townhall Friday
Hour One: "Brunch With Bernie" - Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) takes your calls
Comments

Thom, I was listening to the Ed Schultz radio show which airs right before you on WCPT Monday through Friday. He spent quite a bit of time discussing how some Democratic members of the U.S. Congress, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, are up in arms about the passage of the payroll holiday extension because it is depriving Social Security of much needed revenue. As I listened to this, something dawned on me at the very end of Ed's show. The purpose of the payroll tax holiday is to stimulate consumer spending, which in turn stimulates business, which in turn stimulates hiring. If this plan works (and it seems to be working some), then we have increased the pool of people from whom the payroll tax (FICA), which pays for Social Security, is collected. So if we're decreasing each person's contribution by about 2 percent, but we are increasing the number of people contributing, are we really depriving Social Security of money it would have collected? Or is it merely collecting the same (or nearly the same) from a slightly different source? I mean an unemployed person doesn't have FICA withheld from his or her paycheck because he or she don't have a paycheck. So if we increase the number of people taking home a paycheck and thus the number of paychecks from which FICA is withheld aren't we replacing the 2% that is not being withdrawn from someone else's paycheck by withdrawing the amount we are taking from this new employee's paycheck? I'll be listening for an answer. Thanks. Keep up the good work. - Miguel

Why does Thom advertise for stamps.com telling us to "avoid the post office" then complain that the republicans want to eliminate postal workers. If we all use stamps.com, there would be little need for post offices, only distribution centers which are mostly machines.
One more data point from your caller's question - my family are now permanent residents of Canada while I toil in the silicon forest and send my paychecks over the border. We started the process back when it was obvious the US couldn't win two wars without a draft, and my boys were that age. Now we see that winning was never the goal - what a surprise.
- Clark