Per the IRS, there are over 17 million taxpayers with incomes between 100 and 200K. They pay 22% of all income taxes.
If the Soc Sec cap is removed, without an appropriate adjustment to increase the retirement benefit, someone at the $175,000 level will be paying 37% more in SS tax with nothing to show for it. I would not be surprised if they wind up paying more than many of the .1% who have no W-2 income.
Now, you’re entitled to say that someone who makes 175 large a year is “rich” and can afford it. The conclusion I would draw from such a statement (if you were to make it) is that your definition of “rich” is “anyone whose income is higher than daneel’s”.
Full disclosure - my taxable income last year was $88,500.
There will still be a program called “Medicare” in 2050, but it will be comprised of (a) outpatient clinics, and (b) hospices.
This actually leads to what I think is a workable solution.
Let the SS benefit fall to 70 percent, which as far as I can tell is a long term sustainable level.
Provide a graduated means tested benefit to bring it up to the 100 percent level. At or below the poverty line, the full 30 percent is made up. Twice the poverty line, you get 10 percent. Three times the poverty line, you’re on your own. This benefit is paid for by general revenue, not the SS trust fund.
Two big pluses:
First, it puts the SS trust fund on a self sustaining basis at long last.
Second, there are many SS recipients (lots of them fiscal conservatives, to their discredit) who cling to the fiction that they “are getting back what they paid in”, when in fact, many SS and Medicare recipients are getting far more. This might help provide a needed reality check.
And the answer to that is not funding more benefits for people who can’t find jobs. It’s figuring out how to get jobs, many more jobs, which will add to tax receipts rather than adding to government expenditures.
Trump won because even total bullshit about creating jobs beats a Democratic campaign that scarcely mentions the issue.
You’re assuming my taxable income is not above that $127K threshold.
I think I’ve mentioned somewhere before that I’m in favour of an asset tax instead of an income one - I think people living off capitol should be taxed more highly than those living off salary - even those people paid very good salaries.
But it doesn’t make sense to me that someone earning $250k pays basically the same amount into SS as someone who makes $125K.
It makes sense to me, if they get the same benefit.
I agree with that. It would be interesting to see how much support the likes of Buffett, Gates, and Steyer - who are always ready to increase income taxes - would give to that plan.
Edit - bear in mind though, that most of the European countries that have the sort of ample safety nets and social services that American leftists would like to see here, fund them to a large extent through VATs and higher income taxes on the middle class. I have yet to hear a Democratic politician call for those funding sources.
That’s one takeaway from the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ annual
report released Wednesday.
That doesn’t mean retirees will get nothing by 2034. It means that at that
point the program will only have enough revenue coming in to pay 79% of
promised benefits."
At some point, the whole paradigm of employment as we know it is likely to break down thanks to automation. I suppose at that point someone is going to propose building a wall and making robots pay for it. But UBI is going to have to happen, I believe.
Another obvious way to add to tax receipts is to stop giving the wealthy a free ride.
Bernie talked about job creation, in terms of infrastructure repair and transitioning to clean energy. It didn’t get him elected. The Democratic Party is too busy dry-humping Wall Street to consider getting back to New Deal ideas.
If the jobs created are funded by more federal spending or borrowing, it’s moving the money from one pocket to another. No net gain.
Needs to be an asset tax rather than income tax though. Not nearly enough taxable income in the top 1% to do what I imagine you want to do, even if you take it all.
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
If money causes things to happen, it does so via circulation.
That is, if money goes from government coffers to a government employee to a retailer and the retailer’s employees, to the suppliers and the suppliers’ employees (and to retailers, etc.), to the manufacturers and the manufacturers’ employees (and to retailers, etc.), and eventually, through taxes, back to the government, it causes a net benefit to everyone involved, even if every cent of the money ends up exactly where it started.
The problems start happening when the money stops circulating. When the assets end up in the possession of people who don’t need to spend them.
Governments spending money that goes to the middle- and lower-class, who need to spend that money in turn, does indeed cause a net gain. It’s when that money goes to the 1%ers, with the idea that it’ll “trickle down,” that there’s no net gain from the government spending.
Higher income tax rates at the extreme end may reduce the enormous salaries and bonuses paid to CEOs. Estate tax, property tax etc. will help reduce the “hoarding” aspect of extreme wealth where money falls into a pit and doesn’t come out again. Reinstating capital gains taxes will help move the economy back toward production and employment rather than what amounts to financial masturbation.
I wish that were true but in my state, there is no voter lead ballot initiatives. Unless my state legislature decides to take up the issue, I’ll never have a change to vote for change
Priming the pump has worked pretty well in times of recession. It’s the running a surplus during times of prosperity that we seem to be doing not so well.
Yeah. I don’t object to increasing government revenue and cutting government spending to the point where the government is running a surplus rather than a deficit, but the cuts and tax hikes need to aimed where they can do the least harm to the most people (e.g. aimed at those who have the money to spare).
I took economics in High School, and I know that (in my lifetime) a loaf of bread could once be had for 50 cents, a gallon of gas was less than 70 cents, and that $5 was once considered an exorbitant price for a movie ticket.
That said, I can’t ever really wrap my head around inflation. I attribute this to Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. When I was 5 or 6, and started learning about money and earning allowance, a Hot Wheels cost $1.00. More than 40 years later, a Hot Wheels costs $1.00.
EDIT: As of yesterday afternoon (2/19), a Hot Wheels costs 89 cents (at Target anyway).
I, personally, when it comes to cutting government spending, would suggest that we start with that giant five-sided tapeworm in the guts of the country…
You’re killing me, Sempronius. I’m sure over 90% of the people here voted for either Trump or Clinton. At the local level things tend to be even worse, with no competent choices that aren’t utterly beholden to the two dominant corporate factions.
If we all got started today, pensioners who survived the interregnum could see real change in their investments achieved through the ballot box in 20 years at the earliest. But we can’t convince anyone to even start that process, they all are so propagandized and tribalized they can’t even see a consensus reality any more. The rank and file of the two major factions literally do not see the same world anymore. Meanwhile both factions’ leadership are equally happy to sell humanity’s future to provide cheesesteaks and blowjobs to the 1%.
