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Most noxiously, the Social Security tax is capped at $68,400. This means that Ted Turner and Bill Gates pay no Social Security tax at all on every dollar they earn above this amount, though they will collect vastly more in annual benefits than average workers.

This is a misleading argument. The Social Security tax is capped (now at something closer to $90,000 -- not $68,400), but Social Security benefits are also capped. Ted Turner and Bill Gates may get far more in annual Social Security benefits than the average worker, but the person who earns 50 times more than the capped salary does not get a penny more in benefits than the person who earns $1 more.

Thus the poor continue to receive far less than the upper and upper-middle classes, and even the extremely wealthy continue to draw inflated benefits—which they understandably regard as rightly theirs. That is what the system has taught us all to think.

"The system" hasn't taught us to think this way at all. It's very natural for people to demand that there is some correlation between what they pay into a system and what they get out of it.

But it is not true, and it certainly is not fair. It is hard to imagine a more immoral system of redistributing wealth . . .

Actually, it's hard to imagine any moral system of "redistributing wealth."

The tax that funds it is applied to wages -- even those of the very poor -- but not to investment or dividend income.

So what? Investment and dividend income is given preferred tax treatment in this country because the economic benefits they provide are far greater than the tax revenue they produce.

. . .

The author of this article makes an excellent case for eliminating Social Security altogether -- and against ever implementing this kind of disgraceful nanny-state crap again in the future.

You don't "fix" something that had no business ever existing in the first place.

Imagine a system that did not penalize families with children or over-reward childless, prosperous investors

This part of the article really started to burn me up. The US government spends over $7,000 per person, man, woman or child. The feds alone spend almost $11,000 per year per child on education. To single out SS and look at it strictly as a tax on the young avoids the overall picture. Our entire tax system as a whole is nothing more than a huge redistribution of wealth.

I agree that the younger generation should be the principles in looking out for the welfare of the olders. But I also think that the parents of children should also be the ones paying for their own childrens costs. Like education.

If parents paid for their childrens education, instead of tax payers, imagine the tax break EVERYBODY would have. These parents would have more in their checks than they do now, which then would be applied towards their own childrens education. Most parents of 2 or more kids would really rethink sending their kids off to someone else to take responsibility for, and homeschool, if for no other reason than to save money. At $11,000 per child x 2 (or more)kids= $22,000 (or more). That would negate some parents "having" to go to work. It would also shrink the work force. And according to supply and demand, because of the lack of workers, some wages would increase.

If these same parents were looking out for their own parents, they would have the added benefit of grandma and grandpa helping to raise and teach the younger generation.

Hillary thinks it takes a village to raise a child. But if she'd leave her socialist utopian mits off the "traditional" family, there would be no need for "the village" to raise the children.