No one is disputing that some changes will be required to meet changing demographics. “Enormous” is another matter - a small increase in the cap wouldn’t be an enormous change for me, and I’m well over it. Small increases in the retirement age, as has already been done, won’t be enormous either. As I’ve said, the problem 30 years ago was much bigger.
Yes, I do. Why should I pay for your retirement?
So also said the German to the Greek.
Wait, there’s a cap? I had no idea. Do people actually hit it? You’d think that would be more common with the increasing lifetimes (assuming it’s happening at all). Right?
Pardon my ignorance, and feel free to correct it. Please?
For the same reason you pay for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, and any number of social programs that you don’t personally benefit from. Because they are a benefit to society as a whole, and it is that society that has allowed you to live in peace and prosperity.
Not a lifetime cap, just a per-month cap.
This whole Soc Sec is bad meme drives me nuts. It has nothing to do with the deficit, it’s self funded, it is solvent, it has low overhead, and it works. Can’t they at least pick a govt program that really is bad? Personally I am tired of paying for roads at the federal level, let’s put that back on the states. Or maybe the high-risk states can self-insure themselves against hurricanes and tornadoes. You live on the god damned beach, of course it’s going to flood now and again.
ETA: And I’ll be royally pissed if a dime of my taxes goes to pay for BP’s oil spill. You Gulf coasters brag about all the jobs that oil exploration creates. You took the risk, so live with it.
Please run for office, I’ll vote for you.
Food stamps, welfare and other social programs are intended to be short term assistance measures, not long term entitlement programs.
Social security benefits are intended to be an annuity retirement plan paid to you based upon the FICA and SS taxes that you pay into the system over your lifetime of employment. It was not intended to be an entitlement program whereby you retire early and live off my support. The social security taxes I pay are supposed to be for my retirement benefit, not yours.
If we move more towards a socialistic environment, where we take everybody’s income and then equally redistribute it back to everyone, where will the incentive for people to produce and contribute more to society be? There’s a reason that some professions make more than others, it is to incentivize people to seek out those types of professions. If you tax away the benefit, people lose the incentive.
And Medicare? SSDI? Medicaid? Just because something is redistributive or a long-term entitlement doesn’t mean it’s bad for society.
I understand that this was initially the plan, and it was a large reason why it was passed. And, obviously, removing the cap would change the nature of the system. That doesn’t automatically make it a bad decision.
As far as I know the retirement portion of social security is already progressive (i.e. those with lower incomes still get a larger percentage of their investment back than those that are wealthier). If I am incorrect, please correct me.
I disagree with the last part of this (except in the extreme case of literally taxing away all of the benefits of higher income), but certainly don’t expect to convince you.
As to the former, there is a large excluded middle between current FICA levels, FICA levels without the contribution cap, and “tak[ing] everybody’s income and then equally redistribut[ing] it”. If you want to argue about communism, we can do that, and I’d likely end up agreeing with you. But we’re discussing the US Social Security system, not the USSR.
bolding mine
Are you serious in your assertion that fees and charges for some professions are set not because it’s what the market will bear, or what the service/product is worth, but solely as a carrot-on-a-stick for people not currently practicing that profession?
Srsly?
I suspect those who think that if there were no SS taxes that employers would give that 12.6 percent of the payroll to their employees to invest for their own retirements would be in for a rude awakening. Once one has ascended to the upper rungs of the income ladder it’s easy to forget that a great many (probably most) folks are paid only enough to live paycheck to paycheck with everything they earn going to survival with a few entertainment perks.
And I don’t want to hear the bootstrap comebacks to this, either. If every one in America had a masters degree in some profession it wouldn’t matter. Most of them will still be working at Walmart or in some equivalent service job because there aren’t enough high rungs on the ladder to go around.
That’s why I always groan inwardly when people (even Obama) suggest that hard work and a good education will raise everyone up. The pyramid by definition requires a base and that’s where most people will always be.
Most of us know far too well that employers pay only what they have to and not one penny more. Having more well qualified and educated folks running around just lowers the scale for everyone.
And as for everyone saving and investing for their own old age: No social security taxes? Swell. A 12.6 percent rise in company profit! Y’all didn’t think we’d give it to YOU, did you?
You pay it up to the ceiling, then you don’t pay it. You and A Rod pay the same amount on the first $106,000, then he doesn’t pay any more. And that DOES make sense as long as you’re calling it a pension or an insurance program. How many people pay $206,667 a month (what the payments on someone who makes $20 mil a year) for their working life of say, 20 years (short cause athletes don’t work making big money until they’re 67 like the rest of us) for an annuity payment of $1500 a month for the 20 years they live after payments start.
You remove the caps on the payments in, in order to be honest you have to remove the caps on the benefits. Or you have to admit it’s just a transfer of wealth from those who have it to those who want it.
Were that the case, fry cooks would be paid more than national league athletes.
Replace “want” with “need” and I’m 100% in agreement with this statement. And, in the case of Social Security, I think it’s probably a good idea (the wealthy subsidizing the retirement of the working poor and middle class).
And where do you draw the line at “wealthy?”
Well, the current limit is $106,800. Removing that cap would pretty explicitly make contributions above that limit redistributive.
For some reason the most recent numbers I can find quickly are from 2005, but in that year 85% of households (not individuals) had income less than $100k. I think that the top 15% could probably reasonably be defined as wealthy.
I’d even be willing to tighten that up to the the top 5%, which would put it at $150k.
Of course, wealth and income are not equivalent, and since FICA only applies to income it’s perhaps not as clean a demarcation as I would like. But it’s not unreasonable to presume that those earning more than $100k per year are likely not depending on SS for the entirety retirement planning.
Seriously.
The price of a service is a combination of the supply and the demand, just like goods. In the US we currently value and demand the contributions of physicians, therefore the compensation of physicians is higher than say that of a school teacher. This incentives many people to go to medical school and endure a residency period, so that they can enjoy the large compensation that physicians enjoy. But lets say that 90% of all college students decided to become doctors, and there was soon an over supply of doctors. The price of services for physicians would decline as people could find doctors waiting in parking lots in the morning to be picked up in the backs of trucks for any appointments they could get.
Conversely, there’s a certain amount people are willing to pay for lawn services. It doesn’t take that much technical skill and many people value their own time so little, that they are willing to do it themselves. But let’s say that cutting grass was a precision skill and people prized beautiful lawns above all other things, then there would be a demand for these professionals that know how to cut grass in a manner that only a few people knew how. The compensation of gardners would increase to incentivize people to learn that skill and provide that service.
Seriously.
You are surely aware that the number of residencies available in any given year is limited by external factors, not just the number of folks that want to become doctors. There are a few claims that the Residency Review Boards are very slow to approve new positions largely to limit the number of specialists in a given field (and thus drive up their value).
Perhaps you are not aware that residency salaries are funded primarily by Medicare (and hence you and I) as well…
There is nothing typical or free-market about the medical system in the United States.
This is all far afield of the OP, however, so should be pursued elsewhere.
Well, then there’s the whole matter of corporate CEOs getting paid whatever they can carry and isn’t bolted down, with no respect to actual job performance.
Are you going to tell me with a straight face that there’s a severe shortage of businessmen in this country?
Thank you moderator.:rolleyes:
You have seriously misread, misinterpreted or just plain got wrong so much there, it staggers me. IMO you have nearly completely given an inaccurate picture of how wages, fees and income are set and for what reason.
No one sets their fees or wages in order to get more people involved in a profession. NO ONE. Your stilted and convulted reasoning above I find to be off-base, especially with respect to cause & effect and the intentions of people.
I’m willing to read more, if you can present cites. If it’s just going to be this kind of carrot-before-the-cart-before-the-horse logic, you needn’t bother trying to defend this, at least not to me.