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Social security could be 100% solvent forever if the $106,000 cap was lifted. The current social security tax is 15.3%, but only on earnings up to $106,000 per year. After that, you don't pay any more social security tax.
The numbers:
A person who earns $25,000 a year pays $3,825 per year in social security tax.
A person who earns $50,000 a year pays $7,650 per year in social security tax.
A person who earns $106,000 a year pays $16,218.
A person who earns $1,000,000 a year pays $16,218.
A person who earns $5,000,000 a year pays $16,218.
Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Oprah pay no more than $16,218.
To fix social security, remove the $106,000 cap from the social security tax. This will perpetually fully fund social security. The republican plan calls for privatizing social security, as ending the $106,000 cap on social security tax would not only make sense, it would require the wealthy to pay their "fair share". This goes against the republican party philosophy of "tax cuts for the rich fixes everything".
On paper, payroll taxes (which are horribly regressive, how liberals support a tax on LABOR I do not know) support social security.
In this country, it is far easier to tax labor than to tax unearned income, or to tax wealth).
Some liberals would love to tax unearned income and/or wealth, but that's an unspoken third rail of politics in this country.
Besides, it was originally sold as an insurance program to protect workers and their families from the horror stories common at the time, where disability or death of a breadwinner often resulted in destitution.
I LIVE off of investments and I will tell you flat out right now THAT YOU ARE WRONG..
Have you ever considered getting a job and being productive? (that was a joke...a question which I'd seriously like to ask all the street people and "disaffected youth" - whatever that means - where I live)
Everyone that pays into social security does not live forever...........Many people die before they even get to collect a dime.........
The dirty unspoken wholesale redistribution of Social Security. The program has lasted this long only because so many have paid in for so long without getting anything out of it.
Social security could be 100% solvent forever if the $106,000 cap was lifted. The current social security tax is 15.3%, but only on earnings up to $106,000 per year. After that, you don't pay any more social security tax.
The numbers:
A person who earns $25,000 a year pays $3,825 per year in social security tax.
A person who earns $50,000 a year pays $7,650 per year in social security tax.
A person who earns $106,000 a year pays $16,218.
A person who earns $1,000,000 a year pays $16,218.
A person who earns $5,000,000 a year pays $16,218.
Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Oprah pay no more than $16,218.
To fix social security, remove the $106,000 cap from the social security tax. This will perpetually fully fund social security. The republican plan calls for privatizing social security, as ending the $106,000 cap on social security tax would not only make sense, it would require the wealthy to pay their "fair share". This goes against the republican party philosophy of "tax cuts for the rich fixes everything".
I think you came in to the discussion late. There is nothing to "fully fund", SS is a pay as you go system. The assumptions made on SS are completely out of whack with reality, you can't project 75 years of straight line economic indicators.
Turning it into a partisan issue does nothing to solve the problem. Everyone needs to look at the projections made a realize that taxes aren't enough, no matter how high we raise them, it is a problem that Nixon caused, annual cost of living adjustments.
Asking a liberal to look ahead and plan would be a bit much.
They do not believe in budgets, planning or looking into the future to plan ahead for things.
That is why liberalism is considered a mental disorder. They do not have to ability to plan ahead.
RW do not want to cut it at all, this is a loon lie.
This poster acts like they want to cut it off today and that is a lie.
Liberals DO try to think ahead - that's how they justify their spending as "investments" with a future payoff - but Keynes taught them they could shrug off negative future outcomes.
After all, "in the long run, we're all dead."
RW merely wants to make Social Security even MORE redistributive than it is already, by increasing retirement age and/or cutting benefits.
While this DOES balance the numbers, it does so only regressively by increasing the number of workers who pay in for decades and die before receiving benefits; that is, it increases the number of people whose SS taxes are redistributed to others.
Yet we have a declining workforce who are earning less and the administration put a payroll tax cut in effect which made that paltry revenue even less.
It's like they are out to bankrupt America some times.
Either that or their endgame involves something extreme. Some libs would love to 'fix' Social Security by eliminating the income cap for SS taxes, and/or taxing unearned income. Either of these objectives would be advanced by a crisis.
You really believe putting in an average of 100-150 dollars toward SS a month for 40 yrs will pay for you if you retire at 55 yrs old and collect say $1100.00+ a month for say 20-25 yrs...HMMM no!
The solution is to have a DEFINED BENEFIT. Once all you contributions plus interest are paid out your "benefit" ends. That is the fair thing to do.
Conveniently ignored is that many retire on disability. I know at least four who retired in their fifties when they became unable to work. It is difficult to qualify, but none of the privatization schemes addresses this.
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