> Someone who makes 10 million dollars (or 100 million, or...) a year pays the exact same social security tax as someone who makes $176,100.
You say this as it's some sort of injustice. But the guy who makes 10 million will collect the same benefit in retirement as the guy who makes $176,100. Or are you proposing that the guy who make $10 MM should pay more, but get their benefit capped? Because if that's what you are proposing, I don't see how that is just or fair. Except maybe following the argument along the lines "screw the rich, they can afford it".
Social security is not a pension. It's more like insurance. It is designed to make life as a senior more equitable, not to stoke the egos of the wealthiest by ensuring they do not feel slighted by payments scaling to be larger than benefits above some certain income level.
It is absolutely a "fair" and "just" thing for a society to do to itself.
So unemployment insurance should cost more if you earn more. What about health insurance? Car insurance? Starbucks latte? All goods and services? Would it not be just and fair if all prices were relative to income rather than absolute?
... you'll notice that taken to absurdity this is the same statement as "everyone should be paid the same". And that's been tried.
Government programs are not the same as commercial products. I have no issue with unemployment or health insurance costing a percentage of one's income.
Let's also add fines and traffic tickets to the list of things that ought be more expensive as one becomes wealthier please.
Why not? California been trying to implement income based pricing for privately operated utilities like PG&E for years. It is already partially implemented for electricity.
It seems to me like government programs is a poor delineation, as government can pass a law to extend its own scope.
TANF and SNAP are very different than what I am discussing. That are wealth transfers from general taxes to those in need. Very different than wanking into a public grocery store and seeing different prices based on your income.
Where I am, most grocery stores have two prices for items on the shelves. One "regular" price, and a second, lower price that only applies if one is paying with SNAP.
That taken to an extreme, this idea is the same as "from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their needs". Which sounds great, until you realize that this incentivizes needs and disincentivizes abilities.
It really is not. To see why not, imagine how you'd feel if you had a coworker who would come to work drunk (if they came at all). They would still be paid the same as you. Your only recourse would be to talk to this person as a "meeting of the peers", which they would proceed to ignore.
This was reality under the Soviet system, and was one of the main reasons it failed.
Now, I understand why I am getting all the cheeky responses and the downvotes. People are hurting. Capitalism in the US is currently failing under a different failure mode. The capitalists are relentless optimizers, even past the point where optimizing their metrics stops making sense. Their metric is "extract as much wealth from the populace as possible", and it's gotten to the point where the people are disillusioned, and very soon there will be nothing left to take.
I think you are confusing your wishes with reality.
It is in no way like insurance today, and never has been. It has always paid out independent of circumstance. It was never about equity either - The poor get less, and the very poorest get none. Again, this is the way it has been since conception.
It is a state mandated pension with low returns and a progressive fee. Noting more.
I think you misread. There's no "confusion of wishes with reality", we were explicitly discussing the not-reality that is wealthier people paying more and receiving less, and whether that is fair or just.
My analogy to insurance was more about whether you pay into "your" account with your name on it or if you pay into a big fund directly pays out to recipients, and nothing is held aside for you.
I see. I think there is a lot of baggage with the insurance analogy, like probability and conditional payout which are absent.
The money isnt held in a dedicated account with your name on it. However, how much you pay in is rigorously tracked and used to directly to determine how much you get.
The closest thing is a pension. Like a pension, SS pays out X% of your taxable salary. X is progressive with high earners heavily subsidizing low earners.
SS starts by paying out 90% of taxable salary in the lowest bracket. As income goes up, this reduces to paying out 15% in the top bracket. The brackets are referred to SS bend points.
> Or are you proposing that the guy who make $10 MM should pay more, but get their benefit capped? Because if that's what you are proposing, I don't see how that is just or fair.
You get to live in a stable society, in relative order, safety, and peace. Your life is (financially) richer than 99.99999% of people in the world. All of this in exchange for a small portion of your wealth, and yet you STILL want to complain about the unfairness of this arrangement?
Push it too far, and the only alternative you're going to get is having to look over your shoulder everywhere you go, living in constant fear that someone will pillage your property and threaten your personal safety.
> Push it too far, and the only alternative you're going to get is having to look over your shoulder everywhere you go, living in constant fear that someone will pillage your property and threaten your personal safety.
But that's the thing: is Social Security a safety net or is it welfare? If it's a safety net, means testing (can at least in principle) preserve the safety net aspect.
If it's welfare, you're transferring wealth from people currently working to those retired, many of whom are much more comfortable than those paying the tax. Why are we transferring wealth to those with more from those who must work?
I don't know, I've never heard of this distinction before. As far as I'm concerned we decide which types of programs we want to have in our society, and then we find the funds for these programs. The only moral option then is to take more from those who can contribute more through progressive taxation.
> I don't know, I've never heard of this distinction before. As far as I'm concerned we decide which types of programs we want to have in our society, and then we find the funds for these programs. The only moral option then is to take more from those who can contribute more through progressive taxation.
> Finally, Social Security’s nearly universal nature ensures its continued popular and political support; 79 percent of Americans oppose cuts to the program.
It is not an exaggeration to say that politicians explicitly argue against means testing because they want universality to keep it a third rail and became an increasingly prevalent sentiment during the COVID crisis when money was cheap. For example (https://www.vox.com/2021/10/15/22722418/means-testing-social...):
> “We can choose to strengthen the bond Americans have to one another by proposing universal social insurance benefits that broadly benefit all Americans, or we can pursue complicated methods of means testing that the wealthy and powerful will use to divide us with false narratives about ‘makers’ and ‘takers,’” leaders in the Congressional Progressive Caucus wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday.
And that's the point: there is a very real portion of the party that, rather than cutting Jeff Bezos', Warren Buffets, Bill Gates' and other wealthy individuals who can survive without the cuts social security would rather raise taxes to pay more benefits because it is good politically. It's absolutely absurd, and highlights how the discussion is manipulated to ensure that social security as a political third rail continues rather than addressing seniors actual needs.
So, just to be perfectly clear: are you advocating that there should be no cap in the contributions to Social Security, while the cap on the benefits should stay in place?
And the argument is that if you are rich you can afford it.
But why increase the tax on the rich in an obfuscated way via this Social Security trick? Because you think they won't notice it? Or because you think you can stoke some proletariat fury by claiming that the cap is injust? It's ok to stoke that fury if the injustice is there, but in this case it is not.
If the purpose of society is for people to work together for the common good, then I don't see why it's unjust for people who are better able to contribute to do so.
> are you really getting screwed though, if you can't feel it?
Also: "Why not? The rich have been screwing everyone else since the invention of rich people." :shrug:
I say this kinda-sorta in jest, but in truth, there's a somewhat huge contingent of the ultra-richest of the ultra-rich who are absolutely guilty of such "Screw the poors." behavior. The ongoing and worsening effects of this specific outta-control inequality speak for themselves. Worst part of it is that the things they're doing these days aren't only going to harm just some of humanity, but rather all of humanity, as well as most all other life on Earth.
They could choose to spend the money they've spent doing outright "evil" (bad things that harm everyone) doing good instead, and cemented their places in the history books among many other great humans who made the world a better place during their time here on Earth, but instead they actively choose to do harm, many of them full-well knowing they're doing harm.
It's not and it doesn't need to be. If I make 10 million dollars a year, I don't need social security period. I'm going to be fine no matter what. I personally would not mind, at all, giving up a portion of my income to other people who are not so fortunate.
It's like giving the fat king and the starving orphan both one slice of bread. Sure, it's fair, but does the king need the bread? Who cares about fairness when the playing field is already so skewed in favor one side?
Also: the reality here is that rich people pay WAY less taxes proportionally compared to the poor. If we want to talk fairness, we have to start there. Poor people are spending 100% of their income on consumption, it's going straight into the economy. It's getting income taxed and it's getting sales taxed.
If rich people had to pay anywhere close to the amount of taxes the working class or the poor do, they would turn to dust. I'm sure they're fine in their already extremely favorable position. In short - give me a fucking break.
The argument is indeed “they can afford it.” The addition of “screw the rich” is some bullshit that makes it sound like someone making $10 million and paying $5 million in taxes is worse off than someone making $10,000 and paying $0 in taxes.
Yeah, people who make more money should pay more to fund the government. Apparently this is a wild concept for some.
I mean, in the period of history from the 1980s to now, in contrast to other periods, wealth disparity increased as a direct result of laws being changed, policies being amended, and which regulations the government chose to enforce or not enforce.
It's hard for me to look at the idea of "law, policy and regulation should now move the needle in the other direction" and see that as grossly unjust. We can debate whether social security is the right place to do it, but it seems like one of the top options to me, considering the huge wave of people who are going to be jobless, old, poor and alone, and therefore vulnerable, as the Millennials age.
You say this as it's some sort of injustice. But the guy who makes 10 million will collect the same benefit in retirement as the guy who makes $176,100. Or are you proposing that the guy who make $10 MM should pay more, but get their benefit capped? Because if that's what you are proposing, I don't see how that is just or fair. Except maybe following the argument along the lines "screw the rich, they can afford it".