Good Goin': Mitt Romney Would Pay 0.82% Taxes Under Paul Ryan's Plan

I'll be the first to admit that I should be working my assets off right now instead of blahing - especially since Network Solutions had a massive DDOS-induced shutdown over the weekend, resulting in zero email for me for several hours.  So sadly, even if I wanted to, I couldn't work this weekend, but luckily, the man I had been waiting on over the past two weeks to give me a financial lifeline finally wrote back to me this morning - and even more luckily, I received his email.  So right now, I should really be thinking about creating a compelling proposal to send to him.

But when I hear the word "tax," my ears perk up and it's a debate I don't want to miss.

So what's this about Mitt Romney being able to pay 0.82% taxes under Paul Ryan's smokin' hot plan and how the poor will get poorer?    

Social security always seems to get thrown into the mix in such a debate and what everyone seems to overlook is that social security has historically been, and still is, a self-funding programme.  Check out Line 3 of this Wikipedia article on the Social Security Debate and I'll quote it word for word: "During 2011, total benefits of $736 billion were paid out versus income (taxes and interest) of $805 billion, a $69 billion annual surplus. An estimated 158 million people paid into the program and 55 million received benefits, roughly 2.87 workers per beneficiary."

The problem is not the taxation bit, but the expenditure bit.  Line 9 of aforementioned article: "Further, the government has borrowed and spent the accumulated surplus funds, called the Social Security Trust Fund."  

Ooops... so that's what going over the budget "line by line" gets you!