[businessprofessor]

You are wrong about payroll taxes. Benefits are connected to taxes although less directly than before. You cannot receive benefits unless you pay taxes for a specified period. Payroll taxes are capped because benefits are capped. The left wants entitlement benefits both ways. They want to force participation in entitlement programs but then claim that payroll taxes are no different than federal income taxes. Everyone should pay federal income taxes in addition to payroll taxes. Any able individual not paying federal income taxes is a tax freeloader.

[Dr. Sivana]

You are wrong about payroll taxes. Benefits are connected to taxes although less directly than before. You cannot receive benefits unless you pay taxes for a specified period. Payroll taxes are capped because benefits are capped.

The connection has become so tenuous as to be practically meaningless. The thresholds for benets are quite low, the tacs for Medicare (as someone else emailed me just now) are not capped at all. In any event, since we agree that it is a tax, it makes little difference what the whys and wherefres of it are, just as the federal tax code in general is a crazy quilt of rules and regulations that do not change the character of it as a tax on those who earn an income.

The people all living before the 16th amendment were not tax freeloaders. A person living off of personal pre-existing wealth and has no new income is not necessarily a tax freeloader. And the guy who pays payroll tax but due to medical condition has no expectation of receiving benefits is not a freeloader.

Your definition is arbitrary, and makes no sense to apply as a universal. And of course, since we agree that a payroll tax is a tax, then those who pay it are in fact paying federal taxes, and that the number who pay these taxes is above 50%, so Rush's statement is technically inaccurate.