58 Daniel Schiff

Social Security taxes on only fifty percent of their income. This cap has meant, moreover, that as the incomes within this group rise, the mean percentage of their income that is subject to Social Security taxes steadily falls. The fact that this group, on average, was paying Social Security taxes on only fifty percent of their income implies that their effective Social Security tax rate was half that of the ninety-four percent of lower income earners. In 2001, had the cap on earnings not been in place, the government estimates that it would have collected an extra ninety-six billion dollars— in one year— in Social Security taxes. It is clear that money of this order of magnitude could be used to provide some response to real poverty among Social Security recipients or health care needs, or problems within the Social Security system itself, were this substantial, and growing, statistic to be collected as actual taxes.

From a Jewish perspective, as has been shown, it is viewed as problematic to establish differentiated rates of taxation. This problem, though, becomes manifestly exacerbated when the differentiated rates of taxation favor the wealthy. Given that the core value of a zedakah-oriented society is to help the poor and the disadvantaged, it is patently intolerable if the rich are asked to pay less than an equal share in this enterprise. This becomes a particularly egregious matter insofar as real need goes unaddressed while the rich enjoy a benefit.

There are, of course, those who will argue that the two caps, the cap on benefits and the cap on taxable earnings, could reasonably be seen as offsetting each other. Whether this is mathematically accurate— a prospect that seems remote, given that taxes are usually paid for far more years than benefits are earned™— it hardly addresses the problem that two philosophical“wrongs” cannot be absolved through the production of a numerical“right.” Inequitable taxation rates that favor the very rich cannot simply be combined with redistributive benefits to produce an appropriate outcome. This