San Francisco County, CA March 7, 2000 Election
Smart Voter

Three: Social Security and Taxes

By Mark D. Manber

Candidate for Republican Central Committee; Assembly District 12

This information is provided by the candidate
Summary of position paper: I support full privatization, which means individual self-directed accounts and lump sum access.
By far the largest single item in the federal budget is social security, yet few political debates emphasize this issue. As a Republican, I agree with all of our national candidates in supporting full privatization of this program, and in granting the same options of lump sum, joint survivor, IRA rollover, or deferral of benefits (with even higher benefits later) offered under most private 401k programs and even on most Government employee pension programs.
This issue should be of extreme importance to the various minority communities in San Francisco, not only for the amount of money involved, in general, but because of the heavily regressive way it is collected (i.e. the poor pay proportionally more through a flat tax that is capped) and the very unprogressive way it is paid out. Billionaires and millionaires get full benefits, but with the average life expectancy of many racial minorities not much more than the 67-68 starting age for full social security benefits, a male minority worker could pay into social security 20 to 30 years and then not collect a penny nor be able to leave a penny to his children.
This program is also unfair to small business and the self-employed. The latter are required to pay an additional "social security self-employment tax" which I favor abolishing.
Finally, one should consider the lack of access to lump sum social security benefits for the homeless, the disabled, the terminally ill (including but not limited to AIDS and Cancer patients), and grandparents of college bound children. All of these groups of people would benefit from lump sum distributions of their social security benefits, something that private cash-based 401k programs could have provided them.
It is the nature of the national Democratic party, that they offer special favors to each group they canvass, but they never consider the national interests of the general population. Because social security is not considered a racial or a homeless or a disabled issue, its effect on all these groups can safely be ignored. As a Republican, I feel that if this or any other of our ideas were honestly appraised, we would compare much more favorably.

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