In five years, Medicare will run short of money but Republicans will nix Biden fix
President Biden made known his priorities with the release of his budget plan early this month. One feature is a modest increase in the Medicare payroll tax ("huge" and "giant" says the tax-averse Wall Street Journal editorial board) meant to extend the viability of Medicare for another 25 years beyond 2028 when the trust fund's reserves will otherwise run dry.
The president's offering will be negotiated over the coming months along with budgets from the House and Senate, and the tax increases are destined not to get past Republicans in the House. But the White House proposals do serve to remind that some action needs to be taken about Medicare by a Congress that resolutely chooses to ignore what's coming at us in the future.
We pay 1.45% of income for Medicare, as do employers, for a 2.9% total. single individuals on income over $200,000 and marrieds filing jointly on income over $250,000 pay an extra .9% for a 3.8% total. For income over $400,000 Biden wants to increase the 3.8% to 5.0%. And he wants "business income" to be be swept into the equation. (Owners of professional service businesses have structured them to classify their earnings as profits which heretofore are not subject to the surcharges).
DREAMS OF AVARICE
Republican refusal to consider any tax increases stands out against a backdrop of stunning gains in the wealth of the nation's top earners and business owners. Pay to corporate CEOs has gone steadily upward for decades, skyrocketing 1,460% since 1978.
Even poor results are rewarded, such as $21 million paid to Boeing's David Calhoun in the year its 737 Max airliner was grounded and the company lost $12 billion. Such as Norwegian Cruise Lines' CEO Frank del Rio pocketing $36.4 million with its ships dead in the water from COVID restrictions in 2020.
Corporate boards lavish extras. Atop his $34.5 million base pay last year, the board of JPMorgan Chase gave CEO Jamie Dimon a $50 million "retention bonus" just for him to stay on the job another five years and meet performance targets.
When Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs at Apple in 2011, he was pledged 28 million shares over 10 years provided he stayed on and the stock price rose faster than most other large companies. Both did. Cook's shares rose to $3.5 billion across the decade.
Jeff Bezos' worth increased by $13 billion in a single day in 2020 when Amazon's shares surged 7.9%. He added $74 billion to his net worth at one point that year, which made him personally worth more than McDonald's or Nike. A "Money Issue" of the Sunday New York Times magazine made the point that for the average full-time Amazon employee, who was paid $37,930 in 2020, to accumulate as much money as Jeff Bezos — $172 billion at the time — that employee would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch, 4.5 million years ago, when hominids had just started standing on two feet.
The CEO of giant private equity firm Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman, took home $1.1 billion in 2021, 85% of it in dividends.
And then there's Tesla awarding Elon Musk $56…Click to continue reading
The article continues at our website so as not to make email overlong