The Coney Island Boardwalk. Photo by Rachel Sapin
One way the President’s American Jobs Act aims to put people back to work is by cutting payroll taxes paid by businesses on their first $5 million in half, and by cutting payroll taxes for firms that increase their payroll by adding new workers.
CNN in New York and Crain’s in Detroit paint a rosy picture of how payroll holidays will prove a boon to small businesses. Julio Gonzales, owner of Coney Cones in Coney Island disagrees with this picture. “Social Security is in trouble,” he said. “It’s under-funded, and so cutting that tax doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Coney Cones employs around 30 people seasonally and would supposedly benefit from the plan’s payroll holiday.
Although Gonzales may be underrepresented as a small business owner who is against payroll tax cuts, luckily for us, some media outlets have a similar viewpoint.
• Destroying Social Security’s Only Funding Stream The Hill pointed out that the proposed payroll tax holiday is frustrating politicians on both sides, as it’s taking from “Social Security’s lone funding stream and eventually eroding senior benefits.” This is relevant to everyone as we will all be senior citizens at one point or another.
• A Plan for the gainfully employed, but what about everyone else? The organization Social Security Works released a statement immediately following Obama’s jobs speech condoning the President for stimulating the economy at the expense of the nation’s aging, ill, and elderly.
• A bipartisan effort to rob the blind L.A. Times writer Michael Hiltzik wrote a compelling piece arguing that the tax cuts were “targeted inefficiently and unfairly, skewing to the upper middle class and hurting lower-income families in comparison with the Making Work Pay tax credit it replaced.”
To Obama’s credit, Robert Reich, former labor secretary under Bill Clinton cheered the President’s ability to present a joint session to Congress, and also the President’s ability to clearly explain the jobs issue to the public.
