The Real Social Security Crisis Is Income Inequality
Richard Long
The Real Social Security Crisis Is Income Inequality
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) has called out his Senate Republican colleagues for “creating a phony crisis” with regard to Social Security while ignoring a real one – the income inequality that has eroded the long-term solvency of the Social Security trust fund. Sanders joined a conference call with Social Security Works on Thursday to highlight the conclusions of a report on the impact of income inequality on the Social Security program ... When the payroll tax cap was last set in 1983, the payroll tax applied to 90 percent of total earned income. Today, the tax only covers 83 percent of earned income – a consequence of all of the income gains of recent decades going to the top 10 percent of earners.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-pushes-trans-pacific-partnership-in-flurry-of-local-calls/2015/02/26/2c2065da-bdf7-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html