Re: “The US Likely Has 8 Years—At Most—Before Crisis”

On Sat, 21 Jun 2025 12:15:01 -0400 (EDT), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

Robert Carnegie  <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:

>
Is the crisis because the OAS fund cannot
pay elderly SS subscribers due to the government
pilfering it, or is it because the government
pilfering has to stop when the money is all gone?

>
The government pilfering is a problem, and it's been happening since
Reagan. 
>
The aging population is also a problem, with fewer younger people paying
into the system as more aging people are paid by it.  (And yes, higher
immigration rates can fix this one.)
>
Some people have made the argument that mathematically, if the cap on
income was removed from the social security witholdings, so that
billionaires were paying at the same percentage rate as millionaires
instead of the same amount, that it would solve the current OAS deficit
problem.  This is true, and it's certainly a good plan from any viewpoint
except that of the very rich, but it's also kicking the can down the road
a bit since eventually the very rich are likely to get paid back a good
portion of that a generation later.

<https://ssa.tools/guides/earnings-cap>

Note that, although the /table/ starts in 1956, the text after the
table traces it back to 1937.

And it was $106,200 in 2023. So, that year, billionaires paid the same
as people making $106,200 (as, indeed, did millionaires).

Which means that raising the cap would affect a lot more people than
just millionaires and billionaires.

Having been reminded of this, your comment on getting it back are
quite correct. What would be needed is a separate payment to support
SSA (and Medicare, if needed) which does not increase the maximum
benefit amount. This might be a harder sell.

The /honest/ way (if I may use the term "honest" in this context) is
to raise the income tax rate on the highest bracket(s) and treat
/that/ as the additional SSA support payment.

But the Republicans won't do this -- they are fixated on lowering
those rates every chance they can get.

The Democrates might do this -- but they would find sexier things to
do with the money than to prop up dull old Social Security.

This is why we need /new/ political parties. Two of them, both
centrist, one slightly right (fiscally conservative) and one slightly
left (safety-net oriented, say) who will talk to each other and reach
a compromise.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"