Pranks Are Funny, Right?

When I lived in the dorms at BYU and ate in the cafeteria, my friends and I played a wonderful prank on each other every chance we got. In our particular cafeteria we would pick up a tray, go through the food serving line and choose our meal. As college students often do, I ate the healthiest things possible. My favorite was when they left the donuts out for all three meals of the day and I could have ice cream and chocolate syrup on my waffle, donuts, and root beer, with some bacon strips on the side, for all three meals of the day. At least I was getting the essential food groups, which are different from the recommended groups. Anyway, I digress. After we picked up our food we would head over to the soda machine and load up with three or four glasses of drinks. Again, they were all healthy selections—root beer, Sprite, chocolate milk, and some Hi-C fruit punch to get our fruit serving for the day. Then we’d look around and find a place among friends to sit and eat.

The prank happened whenever one of our friends had just sat down and started looking around, closed their eyes to say a blessing over their meal (in hopes that some nutrients would make it in to their food), or start talking to someone and just forget to pay attention to their tray. Usually by the time they looked back, all of their cups were empty because everyone else had helped themselves to their drinks. We thought we were hilarious, especially when we could pull the prank off multiple times to the same person in the same meal. The person pranked was never as happy though.

Pranks happen to us in real life sometimes. One such “prank” has recently happened to lots of people, specifically, everyone in the United States that receives a paycheck! Here’s how it all went down.

Two years ago, in late December 2010, Congress passed the Tax Hike Prevention Act of 2010, lowering the social security payroll tax (the OASDI line on your pay stub) from 6.2% to 4.2% for everybody, regardless of tax bracket. That bill was only supposed to last for one year, but was extended for 2012 as well. We all got really comfortable with the reduced rate, and even forgot that the cut had happened. Well, with all of the “fiscal cliff” negotiating that happened at the end of 2012, President Obama and other lawmakers, elected by the people of the United States, decided that the working public didn’t need that 2% as much as the government did, and let that social security tax cut expire. They played the prank on all of us and drank some of our bi-weekly paychecks when we weren’t looking!

So, if you have been wondering why your paycheck is less than it used to be, you are not alone. But hey, let’s all just have a good laugh at the wonderful prank, right?