Guess what the "I" in FICA is; the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program is insurance - Edit 2
Before modification by Joel at 10/06/2011 12:39:02 AM
SS is a tax, there's no product purchased. For paying that tax now, you become entitled to future return payments. It does nothing for you in the immediate, and in fact may never do anything for you period. It's a monetary transaction.
"It does nothing for you in the immediate, and in fact may neer do anything for you period" is integral to the meaning of "insurance".
Insurance is a product, with monthly premiums, highly detailed specifics about coverage, procedures, and benefits which are available immediately. It provides you health coverage beyond what you can pay out of pocket and defrays your costs over many years.
I don't see how the two are related in the context you place them. Unless you are claiming that private health insurance is equivalent to a federal tax?
I don't see how the two are related in the context you place them. Unless you are claiming that private health insurance is equivalent to a federal tax?
However shocking you may find that fact. Social security has always been designed and discussed as insurance in every country that has it, including the US. The Social Security Act covers more than that, but that's OK, because retirement income isn't the only form social insurance can take. The very premise of the retirement income aspect, however, was to provide a form of earnings insurance for people who lived beyond the age where they could work (hence it initially set the retirement age at 65, despite the fact that average US life expectancy remained well below that age until the fifties). Insurance, btw, is a service, not a product, not that really matters either way here. Incidentally, I've recently made on this very site the same argument Wikipedia notes on FICA: That because the payments are returned (with substantial interest) to anyone who lives long enough to collect them, it's not a true "tax" at all (though Wikipedia also notes that the SCOTUS the SCOTUS has ruled no one has an inherent right to their SS benefits).
This particular legal case is funny because Obama is in trouble mainly for NOT doing just what conservatives forbade and liberals demanded in the healthcare bill: Mandating public enrollment in PUBLIC rather than various PRIVATE health insurance programs. He could have made it a public duty with ample SCOTUS precedent by making it a public program, but requiring people get it from private insurers effectively compels people to provide a private company profits or pay a penalty for not doing so, and that's unpopular with everyone. Whether it's unconstitutional remains to be seen, but these days we decide what's constitutional based on whoever happens to have political power at the moment rather than what the document actually says (see: "USA PATRIOT Act" ).