PAYROLL TAXES AND GLOBAL PANDEMIC

PAYROLL TAXES AND GLOBAL PANDEMIC

In a series of topics about the new recession, here's a lot of my thoughts on the latest situation given the global pandemic. They are pushing to do away with the payroll taxes for the rest of the year. The issue is that Payroll taxes are taxes that

So if they do away with payroll taxes, guess what, Medicare and social programs like social security suddenly will not be funded. Which makes it an easier target to cut "entitlement" programs.  Also, can we move away accepting the term "Entitlement programs". That makes it sound

Republican Sen.  Lamar Alexander blocked the attempt by Senate Democrats to require employers to provide paid 14 day paid sick leave during this situation. Which is a pretty big deal. It's actually the best indication of the class divide. In this gig heavy economy, many can't just take two weeks off to self-quarantine themselves. A lot of them are barely making ends meet in terms of paychecks.

If anything, the sign of the economical status is pretty clear who can and can't just not show up to work for a given amount of time. Which does make a world of a difference to containing the virus. If you're sick, you need to stay home. But because you can't afford it, you are then putting a lot of folks at risk.

What also seems like the case is that if they did move forward with this 14 day paid sick leave then the President's attempt to encourage congress to get rid of the payroll tax would have been a moot one. The issue there is that a 0% Payroll tax does something that fucks everyone over in the long haul.


The bigger issue is that a Payroll tax cut doesn't do anything for those who lose their jobs, have jobs canceled or just flat out can't go in to work because they're doing the right thing in self-quarantine themselves for two weeks. Because 0% of a paycheck you never get because you didn't work it still means you saved $0. Payroll tax cuts don't help those who don't have a job at all.

A whole lot of jobs got laid off in the last week and in the weeks to come, a whole lot more will happen. None of those will jobs and those people who are now unemployed will get any benefit from this whole thing. The only winners is the corporations. So I'd rather we not do that, but it's bound to happen and in another year or two when they argue that that social security  is so vastly under funded, it's because we got rid of the payroll taxes.