Social Security, the easy way to fix it...

I do agree with your statements but there is one other reason why dooms-sayers talk about SS going broke and that is because Congress and presidents do not increase the FICA contributions in order to balance out higher SS expenses in the future. So the graphs they parade out to the public show reserves slowly disappearing while expenses increase...but none of these graphs consider increasing FICA as necessary...it's just another political con game...

 

Increasing FICA is only one way of improving the SS funding picture.

Unfortunately, FICA increases hit hardest those who we would least like hitting.

A change I'd like to see is to have high income people pay FICA, too!

 

Just tax a few tenths of a percent all the stock transactions each day then use the money wisely...of course government and wisely are oxymorons...

 

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Hopefully this bill will pass this year.

The Social Security 2100 Act

Cuts Taxes, Strengthens Benefits, Ensures Social Security Through This Century

https://larson.house.gov/social-security-2100

 

That looks like no more than a screed describing all the benefits.

What I would want is a bullet point list where each item is a short sentence or phrase that states the change proposed.

As an example, one bullet point might be "end the upper income limit on FICA".

Moving the cost to the general fund is not "cutting taxes", it's shifting the load. So, touting the wonders of cutting revenue and increasing spending is not good enough.

 

Here is link to Larson's original bill [any new filing of the bill this year may differ.]

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/860

Congressman Larson is still on the House Ways and Means Committee this session.

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I just Googled average SS payment and it is $1543/month. Or $18,516/year. An employee earning this wage would be getting $8.90/hour. This is a whopping $1.65/hour higher than the current minimum wage! And 75% of America says the MW should be at least $15/hour. Less than 1 million American workers earn $7.25/hour while something like 62 million are receiving SS payments on average of $8.90/hour. If the current minimum wage is unacceptable, if it has people living in poverty, if it is a national priority to increase it, then math and facts dictate that SS payments also need to be greatly increased. If we use the same $15/hour metric, average SS payments will increase to ~ $31,200/year or ~ $2600/month. This would be a 69% increase over today's average SS payment.

Before any changes are made to SS I say we should not only fix the funding issue but also fix the preposterous SS payment issue that I state above. Just collect a 1% tax on every stock transaction to fund this and other programs...

 

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I like Larson's bill because it doubles the never-increased-for-inflation-since-1984 income threshold where SS itself becomes taxable income.

 

Here are interesting stats from a Federal Employee blog:

As of March 20, 2021, the average annual pay for a federal employee in the United States is $109,992 a year. Income is not the same as net worth but it does indicate that most federal employees are financially ahead of most Americans. In 2019, the median household income was $68,703.

https://www.fedsmith.com/2021/03/29/expanding-the-tsp-to-help-poor-americans/

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Hey thanks. I've only read the really short summary so far.

It sounds like the major revenue needed would be raised by having high income individuals pay in for their full salary, not just for the first $X dollars like they do today. I'm in favor.

From the Bush administration times there were sites that even allowed individuals to select one or more ways of "saving" SS, specifying a little of this and a little of that. This was one of the main methods, of course.

So much gets said about SS that I'll bet those sites are hard to find, even if they exist.