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70 percent of total US wealth is in the control of ten percent of the US population. Ron Paul wants to reduce progressive income taxation and inheritance tax. Consider that the wealthiest have increased the percentage of the total that they control, as each tax "reform" since 1970, lowered the top income tax bracket further from it's high of 91 percent of income above $400,000....the top rate in 1960, on $400,000 plus....in 1960 dollars. Silverf was worth $1.00/oz in 1960, it's $14 today. The 91 percent tax bracket was on income, in today's dollars....on approximate annual income above $5.6 million.

Today, the tax in that income top bracket is 40 percent.
The bottom 50 percent of us, control just 2.5 percent of total US assets, and the bottom half of that group, the bottom 25 percent of us, actually "enjoy" a net negative worth....we owe a percentage of total national assets.
The bottom 50 percent would not "save" anything for retirement. All that they earn and own is devoted to surviving this day, this week.

The wealthy have grown steadily wealthier since 1970, even in a taxing environment Ron Paul and his followers consider as "harsh", or "unfair".

Do you think, with less government regulation and oversight, and elimination of progressive income tax, and inheritance tax, the wealthiest will soon control more than 70 percent of total US wealth, or less? Where will the oversight and enforcement come from to see to it that the welathy do not escape the favored replacement tax, a "fair" or higher sales tax, by simply bartering the expensive goods and services that they consume, with each other?

Who will be there, in the "small government" environment, to see to it that much higher sales taxes are collected, that "off the books" transactions, in a world with no IRS auditors, are not the favored means to avoid the sales tax,
and that the federal government gets all of the tax collected, in a timely fashion?

I recently provided data from the US census that shows that, in Kentucky, for example, hardly the poorest US state, more that 20 percent of those aged 64 and over have incomes below the poverty level.

Social Security was, and is popular, because it is not demeaning, there is no stigma attached to receiving it. It is not welfare. No government money is a source for retirement or disability benefits. The government has borrowed $2 trillion from Social Security, the surplus that Social Secuirty has collected since the 1983, Greenspan chaired "reform".

All of the Ron Paul solutions, relegate anyone who is unable to "save" for retirement, and anyone who becomes disables during his working years, to "pauper" status, dependent on a hand out. Until 1940, that is the way the US elderly lived. Social Secuirty gave the elderly and infirm dignity, and it cost the government nothing. Workers and employers paid into the fund, and the government raided it.

The disaster who fronts as "our president", is demanding $200 billion more, "off budget", to fund his wars. Then he'll tout "the fact" that he's reduced the deficit, since the $200 billion "doesn't count", just as the $150 billion yearly social secuirty collection surplus that he borrows to disguise the size of the budget deficit, "doesn't count". Both the $200 billion "for the war", and the borrowed $150 billion Social Security money are simply added to the $3.4 trillion increase in total US treasury debt since the president took office in 2001.

That $200 billion could be a ten percent down payment on the $2 trillion owed to social security. Instead, in the new fiscal year, 49 days old, the government has borrowed an addtional $20 billion of surplus social security payroll tax.

When the president took office in 2001, the government had stopped borrowing from social security and the budget was balanced. Treasury debt increased by only $18 billion per year, and now, for the last 4 years, it increases over $500 billion each year.

The point? The country was poised to repair its fiscal situation, just seven years ago. In the year 1993, the federal deficit was $290 billion.
There can be dramatic improvement without dismantling Social Security and the government.

Social Security is not "broken", the US treasury, itself is. Social Security could be on it's way to long term soundness, simply by converting the $2 trillion in "special", one of a kind T-Bills issued only to social security, into plain old, ten year maturity T-Bills. The Fed would simply raise interest rates to a level necessary for social security to sell the T-Bills among the regular treasury T-Bill auctions, to the degree it takes social secuirty to achieve face value sales proceeds....$2 trillion for the T-Bills.

I'm sure the geniuses who mangage the Yale and Harvard endowments could be enlisted as pro-bono advisors for the investment of the $2 trillion social security surplus, now in cash after the T-Bill sales.

Total US treasury debt would not even increase after the sale, $2 trillion would be moved from "debt held by the public" column, to debt held in private hands.

Social Security could exchange it's dollars for gold, silver, and Euros. It could even be a lender of last resort to the federal treasury, but at rates mjuch higher than the 5-1/2 percent annual interest that it is paid now, for holding unmarketable "special" T-Bills.

They want you to think social security is failed, governemnt "doesn't work", and private "enterprise" and private retirement "savings" are the answer. If you buy that, why did the government "work", and there was a balanced budget and a reduction in total, non-military federal gov. employment, just seven years ago?

Who benefits from Ron Paul reform? People who pay high taxes, polluters, companies like Citicorp and Merrill, the two biggest in their niches, after both CEO's falsely assured that their losses had been stemmed. Federal regulators had permitted lax mortgage lending, and false positive credit rating of the mortgages sold to investors. This created a housing valuation bubble, it began to crash, and Citi and Merrill were left holding mortgage backed paper that has no value if sold at market, today.

Why not fix what we have? One disaster as president, and a Federal reserve that needs reform and de-privatizing (it is a private bank....), does not justify the "full of holes" reform proposed by Ron Paul.