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Lowering voting age isn’t the answer

To the Editor:

Some in the US Congress are proposing lowering the legal voting age to 16 years of age. Some argue it is a ploy to increase the liberal voters, others argue it is because if you are old enough to pay payroll taxes you should be able to vote. Science tells us the human brain reaches full maturity around age 25. I recall being age 16 and recall my children being age 16, I also have grandchildren age 16. Not I nor them were and are in my opinion engaged in life and civics enough to make rational voting decisions.

I believe a solution may be to drop taxing payrolls of minors. This would benefit employers keeping their portion of social security tax and increase the employees spendable income which would be good for economic stimulus and help them to save more for education if desired. The tax revenue loss would be minimal because this is not a large portion of the workforce and lower income bracket as well.

Our federal government deficit spends so minor impact there.

The social security fund loss can be easily replaced and then some by eliminating the income cap of $142,800 and allow all income to be subject to paying social security tax. This would also shore up the social security funding for future years.

States with income tax cannot deficit spend and would need to adjust taxation and or budgets accordingly.

Paul Huisman

Webster City

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