I can’t help but to disagree with you. While it is true that Lee Raymond only paid payroll taxes on his first $90,000 in income, Lee Raymond will draw the same Social Security benefit as someone who earned just $90,000 a year, and his Medicare benefit will be the same as anyone’s regardless of how much the earned. Therefore, there is really no inherent unfairness in payroll taxes.
However, if you abolished them, you would benefit guys like Lee Raymond, who pay in on their first $90,000 but who don’t in anyway need Social Security or Medicare, but hurt everyone one else, who would get a tax cut out of it, but in return loose Social Security and Medicare benefits, of which virtually all of us other than the very rich will need one day. I am sure that many guys like Lee Raymond would love to get rid of payroll taxes, all it would be for them is a small tax cut. They don’t need Social Security. They don’t need Medicare. However, as it stands, it would be impossible for the vast majority of retirees to be able to afford their own private insurance after retiring instead of Medicare. I mean for crying out loud, look at how high medical insurance rates are for a healthy 30 year old. Can you imagine how high private medical insurance rates would be for a 70 year old with heart disease? Moreover, while many people do have 401ks and other retirement investments, the median balance on those investments if not even remotely sufficient to fund the majority of Americans retirements absent some sort of Social Security benefit, and with a median household income of about 45k a year or so (meaning that fully half of all American households currently earn less than 45k or so a year), half of Americans simply do not have the disposable income to even remotely fund their own retirements absent Social Security, regardless of private plans or incentives.
