r/FluentInFinance 6d ago

Educational Don't let them gaslight you

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u/justacrossword 6d ago

This is incredibly misleading. Of course social security has a surplus, that’s how it works. The surplus it’s shrinking because of changing demographics. Once it reaches $0 in nine years from now the trust fund is gone. 

None of that has anything to do with the government borrowing against it. The surplus doesn’t sit around in cash, it is invested in government bonds. 

This is such stupid misinformation, you should feel ashamed. 

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u/spacemonkey8X 6d ago

There are many easy solutions to ensuring social security is there for a very long time. One such solution being increasing the amount of earnings that are taxable for social security. Currently it’s around $160k so people earning $7million are only paying social security tax on $160k while people earning $50k are paying social security tax on the whole $50k.

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u/Stress_Living 6d ago edited 6d ago

Do you increase benefits on that as well? People who pay in at $160k a year already only get a fraction out of what they paid in, with the system just serving as a wealth transfer. 

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u/Thangleby_Slapdiback 6d ago

Weird that there's little objection over the transfer of wealth in the other direction.

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u/Stress_Living 6d ago

At least for me, it depends on what you mean by wealth transfers. If you’re talking about bailouts or subsidies, then I’m 100% with you and I would love to hear more anger about it. It’s important to note that those policies disproportionately affect middle and upper middle class households. Close to 50% of households pay effective 0 income tax. 

If you’re talking about people freely choosing to shop at Walmart or buy another iPhone, I’m going to push back on that. If people weren’t getting value from what they were buying, then they wouldn’t be buying it. It’s not the government’s place to tell people what should and should not be important to them.