On the New York City subway today, I saw the following ad:
"Freelancers pay twice the Social Security tax that traditional workers do. And yet, we don't feel any more secure. Weird."
Followed by a plea to go the website of the Freelancers Union, which is "working to make freelance fair."
Somebody give these guys an F, as in "fuddled." The so-called double tax creates neutrality rather than bias as between freelancers and employees, given the employer share of the payroll tax. Indeed, it's even adjusted to take account of excluding the employer share from the payroll tax base.
If it makes the Freelancers Union feel any better, they can tell themselves that, when they pay that double Social Security tax, they are actually wearing their self-employed employer hats for half of it.
Gilbert and Sullivan's Lord Poobah would understand. "Let's go over there where the Lord Chief Justice [or one of his other multiple titles] can't hear us."
hello Daniel.
ReplyDeletemy father's last name was shviro. I'm from Israel and my husband is writing his PhD on torts and he's qouting you
That's interesting,עירית
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure that there are no Shaviros in the U.S. except for my immediate family. But I saw a sign that said "shviro" when I was visiting Tel Aviv recently.
Is your husband's family from the former Soviet Union? "Shaviro" was an Americanized version of my father's family when they left Belarus for the U.S. around 1920.
hi daniel,
ReplyDeletethank you for answering.
My father's last name was shviro (and not my husband's), and he was a jew born in Iraq. My parnets told me about a book someone wrote and in the book she says that shviro is originaly shapiro family from Zefat in Israel...
I gather my father's family name was something like "Shaveer" back in Belarus, and just happened to get Americanized as Shaviro rather than, say, Shapiro or Schaeffer. Going further back I don't know where they're from, but have assumed the usual story of the diaspora followed by being pushed ever further east in Europe during the Middle Ages. One would probably have to go very far back (close to 2000 years?) to find ancestors in Israel.
ReplyDeleteI actually have cousins in Israel (though we're no longer in touch), but they're from my mother's side.