bada bing
Full time employment: Posting here.
I totally agree with the last few posters that eliminating the cap should be considered... when I was working it was always a mystery to me and I would have been fine
My view would be yes... you need to allow those paying those additional SS taxes to gain some benefit... to not allow an increase in benefits would be an additional nudge of SS towards being just another welfare program
Lots of taxes I pay now give me no benefit. I suspect most high earners wouldn't care all that much...I wouldn't have when I was working
I'd agree that raising or eliminating the wage cap is likely. The reason is because it concentrates the pain for the solution on a small number of people and lets the majority off the hook for any changes.
I'm at the end of my wage earning career, 33 years of wages above the cap so far, including 12 years as self employed. I am one who definitely would have minded raising the cap while working and to be consistent I wouldn't support it now even though it would be to my benefit. The "black box" of SS already includes a very heavy dose of income redistribution "welfare" and raising or eliminating the cap just increases the "welfare" aspect. I'm not against welfare as a concept, but the general welfare should be paid for from the general fund, not on the backs of a small percentage of workers with higher earned income.
If I had to predict when SS will get "fixed", I would guess it will happen when the majority of congress still expects/hopes to be in their seats at the time the hammer would fall. Since SS is funded until 2034 (16 years from now), I would bet you'll see more interest in tackling it 4-6 years from now.
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