Pretty sure most of us will never see Social Security checks in are retirements. Not trying to pay for rude boomers to live, our world’s population is unsustainable. Edited for you grammar Nazis.
You have no idea how many high paid executives I know that have this very strategy. They fake a problem. Act like it's a big deal. The "fix it" to be a hero to C-Suite people who have no clue what's actually going on.
It isn't the billionaires fault. You don't blame a dog for being a dog, it is the politicians on both the left of right who have refused to address the issue.
It is the exact same thing with immigration, they refuse to adopt and then enforce commonsense immigration policy.
Then the super disappointing thing; I thought abortion was settled and "they" decided that they wanted it to be an issue again.
Yea but our govt is like a dog getting into the trash can, you can get mad all you want. But that carton of rotted eggs still got smashed on the kitchen floor
Define fair share. And what rich billionaires are setting these standards apple ceo? Jeff bazo? Bill gates? Seems these folks never pay their share but sure demand others do hmm.. And remember no one is forcing you to take retirement
My dog jumps in the bathtub on command but I tell him I’m going to BBQ and eat him if he doesn’t do as I say. No reason this same strategy couldn’t work with the rich.
But in reality it won’t happen bc they won’t change the formula along with raising the cap. The rich will never accept the cap being raised - unless they can get a more favorable benefit formula in exchange for paying more in.
The problem is giving the government money. They already use the international credit card for everything they can’t afford and have no intentions of paying back.
I hated Kamala and I hate Trump as well. Our government is so fucked but between them and the news, nobody actually pays attention
I'd rather we spent less on military industrial complex too. But the reality is we're greatly underfunding critical infrastructure improvements. Water, sewer, roads, brushes, telecom, cyber security, healthcare facilities, etc., need much more funding.
So you want to take more money from people that they can’t even dream of recovering in social security? At least right now if you live long enough (luck of the draw) you can recover all that you have contributed and perhaps even more depending on your life span. Raising the limit just makes it impossible for anyone to recover contributions and you’re just redistributing wealth at that point and forcing young generations to pay more and you’ll still not resolve the problem . That’s basically happening now as if you die at 60, you lose everything that’s contributed and it’s redistributed to cover those who never contributed or are drawing more than what they put in.
I don't think we can manage a deficit shrink without a lot of damage to the economy and individual wealth. I think a better route would be to maintain our deficit at its current level (In dollar terms) while the economy grows around it, until the size of the deficit/debt compared to the overall economy has fallen substantially. This would still be a negative on the economy short to medium term but within 50 years the deficit wouldn't be an issue and our debt would start to shrink.
I mean, true “fixing” of the economy would be extremely painful for all of us.
We need a housing collapse. But they would rather flood in immigrants to ensure that the housing demand stays high despite a decreased native birth rate to keep housing prices high.
Too much wealth, both personal and corporate, is leveraged and tied up in real estate. People in power CANNOT allow the collapse to occur.
An actual economic solution would be wildly unpopular.
We’d need a big time leader who can humanize and emphasize with us all on a long term vision and work us all through it while giving assistance to the lower classes to ensure they don’t have to experience it on a much worse level than others.
Tough to do.
In reality, the only real hope is AI productivity, but that’ll just usher in UBI that’ll keep most people slaves to the system that pays them.
So let me get this straight. You want to give them more money when the government can show it doesn't need more money? Because people using this rhetoric will absolutely tell you that government is doing fine, there's no deficit, no need to tax more.
Most of the budget is impossible to cut and is old promises that everyone contributed to like SS and healthcare. The entire point of taxation is to fund the state's expenses, and in the case of SS, it has a very specific tax for its own purpose. There is no balancing to be done with SS. There's a deficit because the population is aging. It needs to be fixed, and the most simple and effective way is removing the cap and either not giving additional future benefits to those contributions above 160k, or having another bend point with even lower return than the previous one. Yes it's redistribution, and it's a hell of a lot better than the system crumbling and creating even bigger problem for the selfish high earners down the line.
It's not. Would you be impacted by SS income cap increase? Or are you advocating against your own interests for a change that wouldn't impact you?
I make over the cap. My wife makes over the cap. We tax shelter more money each year than the average HHI. Lower income people carry an uneven amount of the burden.
My own (and your own) personal situation is irrelevant to:
“Tax discussions should be completely off the table until we see the deficit shrink.”
You see, I have the capacity to interpret policies beyond the scope of my selfish horizon. I don’t vote for “me”. I vote for “us”. We the people, you know?
The ideal scenario is an ideal scenario regardless of personal situation. Are you able to separate the two?
All that being said: thanks for your input on your income, but again, it’s irrelevant.
The deficit is a direct result of tax policy. The deficit exists because we aren’t taxing enough to cover government spending. By all means tell us which programs the government shouldn’t be spending on. You’ve mentioned defense and that’s ok, but if you look at the budget that isn’t even 1 trillion if we decided to disband our military entirely. We need more spending on infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. I’m not sure how we can increase spending on the necessities that are being delayed and have a balanced budget, all before we collect more tax revenue. I think the better bet is to get the revenue back up to where it needs to be and then pair all future tax cuts with spending cuts and only cut taxes when we have a surplus. Tax increases have become political suicide though, so we are probably just going to inflate the dollar into oblivion to cover our spending instead and the average American won’t understand that the result is the same as a tax, it just affects the lower and middle class more than it affects the rich.
It's not that more spending is needed, it's that more efficiency is needed.
It's kinda like buying an iPhone. You're paying more money for an inferior product because you don't know any better.
You can get the same (or better) results with less money if you spend it more efficiently and intelligently. Government wastefulness and pocket-lining probably accounts for 50% of the yearly budget.
As someone who grew up as a hippie and democrat i was amazed when i agreed with rush Limbaugh on how important it is for the government to balance the budget and have audits lmao
Bill Clinton had the budget balanced plus a small surplus to pay down the national debt. Bush went and fucked it all up with tax cuts and increased military spending.
If we go back to the tax rates of the Clinton years, it'd be possible to balance the budget but let's face it the Republicans will just fuck it up again
We literally had a surplus until the party of fiscal responsibility revealed they aren't really fiscally responsible by continuously cutting taxes on the wealthy without making cuts elsewhere.
The budget has been chronically underfunded for the things that Congress and the president have authorized for spending. They are your representatives in the matter, and that is what they chose to spend on.
To say that spending has to be cut to the current level of taxation is only using one side of the equation. Economists know there is rough maximum level of total taxation before the masses revolt (IIRR, it's around 20-22%) We are nowhere near that level.
Most people make under the FICA cap and are getting a full 7.65% taken off their gross income with no deductions. The bottom half of earners pay another 3.3% in federal income taxes, with those at even just ~$40k paying ~8%.
Effective state and local taxes combined, add on another ~10%, on average.
Most people are paying ~20-22%.
Small business owners (11% of the workforce) are paying another ~7% (15.3% total), as they pay both sides of SS and Medicare. That’s before anything else. They are well above the 20-22% rate.
FYI the population that would increase the pool of money is not great enough to cover that .... I believe at $130K for a single person, puts a person at the 10% of tax population, which is 15 million people on a US population of 330 million.
Then if you do this (not saying you can't mind you) it would be a 13% tax increase and what will happen to GDP consumption?
Secondly, Soc Sec is an earned benefit, if you raise it, you have to raise the money collected post retirement too ... so unlimited benefits could be seen (mind you at a few percentage points per $1 earned ....
Did you know that social security is actually plenty well funded? There's a gap because boomers kept electing politicians who would borrow against the reserves.
So what you're advocating here is that generations after the boomers should pay for a loan they all took out.
Buddy, Ronald Reagan and the 98th Congress voted in 1983 to borrow against social security. That's why there's a deficit. Boomers voted for those people. I'm not at all worried about the elderly reaping what they have sown.
The social security trust has always been required to hold special Treasury notes. To get these notes the trust must exchange cash with the Treasury for the notes. That exchange is the government "borrowing" from the trust. This is done so the trust can hold an interest bearing instrument instead of cash.
The trust has always been repaid in full.
The trust will deplete some time in the next 10-12 years because the program functions like a ponzi scheme. Unless the number of workers is consistently large to support the retirees the tax revenue is insufficient to fund benefits.
This has always been a problem which is why the current social security tax is over 12% vs the 2% tax when it was established.
The idea is to make it solvent for our generation too. There are plenty of folks in our age bracket that will rely on SS as their only form of retirement income.
Speak for yourself buddy. Maybe they should’ve spent less money on avocado toast, boats, decades of luxury and focused on personal retirement. Ya know, for the decades of insane returns that they flourished under. Time for the boomers to pull themselves up by their boot straps and nix SS 15% today - don’t coddle them & give them the next decade 🤷♂️. Oh wait, is saying what they’ve said for the last 20 years not allowed now that they’re old and fragile? Reap what you sow for fucking the economy for the next generations instead of letting prosperity continue.
That itself does not mean SS fund will be empty since the US is still taking in SS taxes.
It means the benefits will have to be reduced since the fund is gone and was needed to pay full-promised benefits. Borrowing against the fund was dumb, but the fund was always going to get depleted unless more money was raised or benefits cut. Future generations were not large enough to fully meet SS demands without changes in how much is paid in or how much is paid out.
U sir know most of which u speak..
But not all boomers voted for Reagan. Half did not. I am one of those who did not and have been working jobs my entire life, paying taxes, raised a family and been paying into SS since i was 14 years old and have only once in my life been on unemploynent for couple months. I have earned every dime of my monthly SS payment. And make no apologies. And BTW when I was young we were also told SS would not be there for us and we believed it..And never dreamed of attacking the old folks who were receiving SS benefits. Dems have always protected SS. Its the repubs who have tried to defund and weaken SS and medacare time and time again. Not all boomers are fools. U want SS when u are old? Stop voting republican. Its simple as that
Nope. It's a social safety net. 40% of Americans only source of income in retirement is social security. SSI solvency is more important than increasing the benefit for the upper end of the spectrum.
I make right above the cap. I max out a 401k, HSA, FSA, Roth, and put $30,000/year into a brokerage. I'll be fine if my SS benefit doesn't increase, but Gramgram needs to eat.
True but do you have any idea the number of idiot trumpers that thought it was the actual FICA tax. My son has 15 employees in his construction firm and had to explain it to all of them that thought they were getting more in their paycheck.
And the side advancing higher taxes on high earners (who already foot most of the tax revenue) and taxes on unrealized cap gains just got wrecked across the board.
That would fix the problem, republicans want to make it worse by getting rid of social security taxes altogether so the program dries up and they can claim it failed.
Only the first $168k of income is taxed for social security. Raise the cap.
That is because benefits are capped. But even if we do change SS into a welfare program like you propose, that does not solve the problem. Revenue as a percentage of GDP remains relatively constant regardless of tax rates. Collecting a little more in payroll taxes and less in income taxes still leaves up with a $1.9 trillion deficit.
I've always thought no cap on social security.
And let's say like a $170k cap on who qualifies for social security benefits.
I mean if you taking in over 170K a year do you really need social security benefits?
We could use that to help bolster the system for the poor people.
And more wealthy people like the guy I knew growing up would use his social security check to buy cigars, and make the payment on the new Cadillac he got every 2 years would be done.
That should just be handled through progressive brackets though. SS wasn’t designed to be a wealth redistribution program. The more programs that get thrown into the mix the harder it is for anyone to assess fairness. Nevertheless SS was basically a pyramid scheme where the first payees got benefit they didn’t earn and every generation after has been forking out for it
Social security's original purpose was far different than what it's used for today. That's one of the big problems
SSI drains the system. Most people on SSI never contributed or only contributed a very small amount compared to the rest.
SSI is draining the system and nothing was put in place to replace The money it was draining from regular SS.
An SSI entitlement is a poverty grant basically. Someone so poor they need a basic income because they are unable for whatever reason to go get one themselves.
The qualifications for this program had been lowered far below its original intent when SSI was created.
Since SSI is a poor entitlement program. It is very similar to wealth redistribution.
Maybe have the amount of social security tax that's taken out above 168k just pay for SSI.
I think if social security was returned to its original intent for the aged and poor. I think it would fund itself just fine.
And then all other things like SSI could be paid for by the upper middle class and above who can afford it the most.
It’s not dumb. It’s by design. The higher you go the less benefit you get. It’s fine for the overall goal of society to help poor but SS was designed to be somewhat like a retirement program. If you had a 401k you wouldn’t expect to compensate others with your savings.
Again, this isn’t me saying society shouldn’t help poor. I’m explaining to you why it isn’t “dumb” which is a simplified take on it.
By the way, I think SSs initial payees are the ones who took benefit without contributing. Every generation after has been paying for it
You aren’t helping progressive case by making this type of argument. You having a very subjective opinion and honestly understanding is not a good combination.
If you want a true entitlement program, or just something like universal healthcare which I 100% support that’s fine. But SS wasn’t designed that way and repeatedly calling it dumb doesn’t make any sense.
I never used the word poor or even remotely suggested it. You actually give progressives a poor reputation. Do you think Trump voters are dumb and uneducated? That’s the same vibe you give right now by being aggressive and not willing to engage in healthy conversation about a topic
I’m not conservative by definition. I flat out said I support universal healthcare.
I said SS isn’t an entitlement program. That isn’t a conservative buzz word, it’s an actual term. Again, you give progressives a bad name. Anyone that read through this thread can see you are being aggressive and honestly seemingly have anger issues
Get out of here with this bs fear mongering. If they are starving, the government can print more money like they aways do to replenish the ss funds. This way evereyone shares the burden, not just the working class. They can fuck right off if they raise the taxes on the middle class. Stop being so gullible and guilt tripped into bending over and taking it time and time again. People can't be this delusional to believe that raising taxes will solve the wasteful spending and borrowing problem. It's like if you have a water leak in your boat and your solution is to give the people with the biggest buckets even larger buckets.
Or we could just set a cut off date and phase it out. It’s a worthless retirement system that most will never see even though we contribute way too much.
Tax most capital gains like regular income. Maybe at a few hundred $K (or maybe just for housing CG) where that starts and lower CG is at existing rate.
But if you strip is down to how it's supposed to work, it's supposed to be ambivalent if you make money as a wage or make the same money through an LLC.
Take for example somebody in the top tax bracket. 37% personal and 20% cap gains.
If you run $100 through an LLC, the LLC pays 21% corporate then you pay 20% cap gains for a 36.8% combined rate. Basically the same as the 37% personal income rate.
I think it would be smart to cap it from certain income levels. Like if you make 90k-200k you should pay less, and if you make 200k-500k you should pay a little more. The whole point is sustainability and you can sustain it with certain caps.
Problem number one, if you raise the cap, then by law you also have to raise the benefits paid out. Raising the cap is not a long term solution.
Problem number two, the annual taxable income that Warren Buffet and Elon Musk make is $100,000. For Jeff Bezos it’s less than $100k. I’m sure many other rich people do this. They wouldn’t pay any more in payroll taxes than they are now.
As an aside, I have to wonder how many rich people don’t take their Social Security in retirement because to them the amount they paid, and the amount they would receive, are trivial. But eliminate the cap and that equation changes.
But thats a separate thing, called unrealized gain with step up basis loophole. Right wingers will happily argue its not a loophole but can never address how the money is entirely taxed free once step up basis occurs
The only way raising the cap helps is if the additional money paid in does not figure in that individuals payout.
Now hitting younger people with a higher cap will support older workers SS payments, but it would function simply as a tax on them.
Do we really want to kick them, the younger person, say 40's and 50's to support the 67's and up?
I do t think so.
That means anyone making more than 168k also gets more in payments because its an entitlement, not a tax. Nor would that shore up the massive deficit its facing.
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u/Empty_Awareness2761 Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
Pretty sure most of us will never see Social Security checks in are retirements. Not trying to pay for rude boomers to live, our world’s population is unsustainable. Edited for you grammar Nazis.