W, Read My Lips

The Good Professor Bainbridge spotlights a Wall Street Journal editorial that states what many Californians already know:

An income of $90,000 -- even $150,000 -- is hardly rich if you're trying to raise a family in many areas of this country. Lifting the cap amounts to a whopping 12.4-percentage-point marginal tax rate increase on middle-class households, as well as on small-business owners who don't even get to enjoy the fiction that their employer is paying half. These are some of America's most productive people, and, by the way, they tend to vote Republican.

As April 15 approacheth, W had better keep in mind what he says, rightly, so often: "Americans pay enough taxes."

And we get little for them (especially social engineering projects akin to moving piles of sand from A to B and back again).

And, we certainly get very little from payroll taxes.

Is it a broken system that requires workers to pay retirees? Of course.

Does increasing that redistribution fix the problem? Speaking from admitted ignorance, I cannot see how. It should be noted that others far less ignorant on this topic than I are also deeply concerned by W's loose lips:

Removing the cap completely would push marginal tax rates to their highest levels since the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, calculated Mr. Wesbury, a former chief economist for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. The top marginal tax rate would reach 53%, he said.

The tax increase would “undermine the very program he is trying to create” by hurting equity markets and reducing returns in the proposed private accounts, Mr. Wesbury said.

Time wasted and better spent addressing serious issues effecting the new Investor Class (from which a portion of Republican Party growth flows). Examples include reduction or elimination of both Capital Gains and Alternative Minimum Taxes.

Alas, I'm a Conservative who votes Republican, but, I don't have to.

UPDATE:

Tom Maguire offers some help to W on this point. Intriguing, but I keep coming back to my simpleton question: Will I ever see that money again if W lifts the cap and takes it from me and my family?