USA Today places a "journalistic" spin on SS "Tax the Rich" concept

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

I like to call it the "rich people have feelings too, you insensitive bastard" spin. I don't think ANYONE in the middle-to-lower economic classes is saying "fix the problem, just don't involve me." I think they are FED UP with story after story after story in a job market that has been hemorrhaging jobs to overseas markets, balanced with stories of fat executive compensations (like Carly Fiorina's #21 million golden parachute, just to name one example). We just don't read enough stories of "sacrifice" among Bush's "base."

:grr:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=1&u=/usatoday/20050209/ts_usatoday/polltapwealthyonsocialsecurity

Poll: Tap wealthy on Social Security

Most Americans are willing to endorse painful steps to ensure Social Security (news - web sites)'s long-term solvency - steps that nick the rich, that is.

Two-thirds of those surveyed by USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup last weekend say it would be a "good idea" to limit retirement benefits for the wealthy and to subject all wages to payroll taxes. Now, annual earnings above $90,000 aren't taxed. (Related: Poll results)

The willingness to support sacrifices by somebody else isn't surprising.

"It's like when you ask about taxing cigarettes, the people who support it, amazingly, are those in the population who don't smoke," says Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites). "If the sacrifice includes them, they think twice."