What's wrong with social security?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

For starters by the time I might be collecting it, the monthly checks are analogous to a weight watchers dinner, if you get 2 or 3 of them, you won't starve. There are many reasons for that but the one I want to pick on right here is the cap. Social security (the OASDI part of the FICA tax) is 6.2% for both employer and employee but only up to the first $118,500 of wages. If you're a well paid executive making $500,000 or more most of your wages are free of FICA tax. If you get a significant portion of your income from stock options, business profits, interest, rent or dividends, there's no FICA tax on that at all.

It's all just another means for the 1% to stick it to the rest of us.

[Hoyt]

1. The problem is, if you increase the cap, we will likely increase the benefits which minimizes any

funds available to ward off a deficit, whenever, or if, you think it will occur.

Personally, I don't think we will ever see Congress -- even if Dems are in control -- pass what amounts to a 12.4 percentage point tax increase by enacting an unlimited cap. Heck, they can't even accept a 2.5% increase to help poor people get health insurance. Maybe a faster increase in cap level is doable or an increased tax, say 2 - 4% to shore up the fund.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. I hope you're wrong

I believe it's unfair to take 6.2% of the $3 per hour a waitress may earn while taking 1% of what someone who earns $750,000.

[longship]

2. I am on the street, and deader than a Tyson chicken, without it.

With it, I own a home with no mortgage and am making a go of things. On less than a thousand a month! Thankfully I am very frugal.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

4. Good for you but you deserve more

And people making minimum wage deserve to pay a lower percent than those making millions.
I should retire soon but I have 20 years left on a 30 year mortgage.

[haele]

5. Here's the thing most people who don't want to raise the cap complain about.

A 30 - 45 year old executive (or doctor or software engineer) making $250K a year *now* never thinks that maybe things can change, and s/he might be out on his or her ass with no income for 10/15 years before they reach Social Security age. The 2% to 5% income level types who actually make up the "Middle Class" are often of the mistaken idea that economic growth is constant, or that their "skillset" is so valuable to Business at large that there is always going to be a job opening for them if the business they're working in right now hits a bump in the road. That they can keep working, and that if they have to, they can retire at 55 and still live the good life up in to their 70's, and still have enough left over to leave their kids when they're gone.
The dirty secret is that most well off people don't really think about life - or the quality of their life - as it would be when they're in their 80's. Or other "end of life" issues. No one likes to plan for a future when they may to have to go into a nursing home for 5 to 10 years because no one can take care of them, but they're not bad enough off to die yet.

Nor do they consider they might get fired at 55 (just old enough to be looked at askance at a job interview) during a GOP recession, while they're still paying off a mortgage and student loans, and maybe a child support check or two, so they have to dip into that healthy Retirement Stock Portfolio to keep afloat until job openings pick up - or they reach Social Security age.
They especially never think they're going to have to pay the hefty early withdrawal fees and tax penalties as they dip into their retirement to keep the lights on and food on the table over the course of the ten years of under-employment and failed business ventures.
Or that they get injured, or sick and can no longer work before they can retire.

But, hey. They're well off - or maybe even wealthy. Maybe even they make a million a year *right now*.
But honestly, even if I were making that much, it would be better to protect oneself in the event of a total GOP gutting of the U.S. economy, because frankly, that's what the Supply Siders and Dominionists want.

When thinking about the real world of the 99%, raising the cap shouldn't be an issue. Lowering the age for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid should also not be an issue.

It's really insurance against the economic foibles of the GOP.

Haele

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

7. That's all true

I just hope people wake up to idea that the workplace in the US is becoming less stable as time goes by.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. The problem is that it can't bomb a country halfway around the world while evading radar detection

if it could, don't worry, we'd be throwing trillions more at it.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

8. Well maybe we could close some of these

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases

...since we can do everything inside nuclear carrier or an armchair in DC.

[angstlessk]

9. Robots should pay social security and Medicare taxes...

If a robot replaces 50 workers, it should pay the FICA taxes of the replaced workers...and the employer pays his 1/2 also! With raises based on growth.

Still cheaper than wages, etc.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

10. That's not going to happen