Strengthening Social Security, do you support

[ProSense]

this from The People's Budget (PDF

Social Security

• Raise the taxable maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable
  maximum on the employer side
  
• Increase benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side

[mmonk]

1. Well that would certainly create a strong system.

Employers would balk of course though.

[ProSense]

2. Obviously,

it's not just employers.

[mmonk]

8. But they currently control the US political system.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. End the Bush tax cuts, Cut Defense 30-50%, End the drug war, legalize & tax pot first.

Then see what the numbers look like.

[girl gone mad]

4. Eliminate the payroll tax and fund SS from general spending.

The federal government can always meet its Social Security obligations. No more of the neoliberal lies which serve only to promote regressive taxation.

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/12/20/reality-check-why-truth-will-protect-social-security-30569

[ProSense]

6. Hmmmm?

"No more of the neoliberal lies which serve only to promote regressive taxation."

Proof that opinions differ: Marshall Auerback and Randall Wray were called tools when the article you linked to first came out:

Reality Check: Why Truth Will Protect Social Security

Cut the Payroll Tax to Save Social Security

[girl gone mad]

14. They are right, but Obama certainly doesn't support what they propose.

Obama can't even seem to figure out that the Federal government doesn't operate its budget the way a household does.

[dkf]

7. Sanity. Thank you.

[Luminous Animal]

12. That is a crap solution. SS would become even more of a political football and

activists would have to fight every single year to maintain it.

[mmonk]

15. What about the fact both parties are reducing social spending

in the general budget? The only reason they have not destroyed it yet is because it is separate.

[girl gone mad]

19. They are destroying it anyhow...

and we're already losing the fight.

[dkf]

5. Overfunding social security now doesn't really work you know

Most Americans believe that the Social Security trust fund contains a pot of money that is sitting somewhere earning interest to pay their benefits when they retire. On paper this is true; somewhere in a Treasury Department ledger there are $2.4 trillion worth of assets labeled "Social Security trust fund."

The problem is that by law 100% of these "assets" are invested in Treasury securities. Therefore, the trust fund does not have any actual resources with which to pay Social Security benefits. It's as if you wrote an IOU to yourself; no matter how large the IOU is it doesn't increase your net worth.

This fact is documented in the budget, which says on page 345: "The existence of large trust fund balances … does not, by itself, increase the government's ability to pay benefits. Put differently, these trust fund balances are assets of the program agencies and corresponding liabilities of the Treasury, netting to zero for the government as a whole."

Consequently, whether there is $2.4 trillion in the Social Security trust fund or $240 trillion has no bearing on the federal government's ability to pay benefits that have been promised. In a very technical sense, it would lose the ability to pay benefits in excess of current tax revenues once the trust fund is exhausted. But long before that date Congress would simply change the law to explicitly allow general revenues to be used to pay Social Security benefits, something it could easily do in a day.

The trust fund is better thought of as budget authority giving the federal government legal permission to use general revenues to pay Social Security benefits when current Social Security taxes are insufficient to pay current benefits--something that will happen in 2016. Effectively, general revenues will finance Social Security when the trust fund redeems its Treasury bonds for cash to pay benefits.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/14/taxes-social-security-opinions-columnists-medicare.html

[ProSense]

9. Wow,

I thought there was strong support for the people's budget?

Didn't people read it before advocating for it?

[mmonk]

10. I support it.

I do not support either the Republican ideas on the budget nor the Third Way's budget. Both are built on the false premise we are in this situation because we spend too much on social spending. They falsely work from a position social security is adding to budget woes.

[Luminous Animal]

11. I, for one, clicked "no" by mistake.

[Marrah_G]

13. I support ending tax cuts for the rich, Real health CARE reform and ending the wars

I do not support the republican view that SS and Medicare need "fixing". Strengthening frankly is just wording used in propaganda. Sort of like the " clean air act".

[TBF]

21. + 1 - I agree completely with your assessment. nt

[indurancevile]

16. I don't quite understand it. It's my impression that Social Security has always been designed

to tax 90% of all wage earnings.

And as for "eliminating the taxable maximum on the employer side" I don't understand what that means.

[Luminous Animal]

18. No, currently Social Security taxes are only levied on the 1st $109,000 of wages.

That is why, as a self-employed person (amongst other reasons) my total tax rate is 36% of my income, whereas an acquaintance who makes 4 times as much as I do, has a 17% tax rate.

[indurancevile]

25. what proportion of individuals makes over $109K in WAGE income,

do you think?

i understand that $109K is the current cap, but that's beside the point. we were talking about whether or not 90% of wage income is subject to social security taxes.

according to this, only 6% of individuals have income > $100K. That includes investment income as well as WAGE income -- ALL income.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

which would suggest that 90% of WAGE income is already subject to social security taxes, since the higher you go in the economic ladder, the more of your income is investment income (capital gains, stocks, bonds, rents, etc.)

it's my understanding that social security was set up to cover 90% of wage income & is regularly readjusted to keep roughly that coverage.

[rug]

17. If you're going to pluck out sections, put these up for polls.

Health Care
• Enact a public option
• Negotiate Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies
• CMS program integrity and other Medicare and Medicaid savings in the president’s budget
• Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade (maintain doc fix)

Defense Savings
• End overseas contingency operations emergency supplementals starting in Fiscal Year 2013,
providing $170 billion in FY2012 to fund redeployment, while saving more than $1.8 trillion
from current law spending levels over ten years.
• Reduce baseline defense spending by reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces,
procurement, and R&D programs

[ProSense]

20. OK

here

[rug]

22. Thank you.

[msongs]

23. I support SS NOT stealing 60% of your earned retirement just because you got a little pension in a 5

year job.

[ProSense]

24. OK, but

what about the OP proposal?

[indurancevile]

26. i support leaving it alone & repaying the $2.6 trillion dollars owed.

preferably by the banksters & fraudsters who got the most benefit from the borrowing.

25 years down the road, if there's still a problem, deal with it then.

all these "proposals" are stupid -- because they all amount to putting more money into the Trust Fund -- which needs to be PAID BACK BEFORE THROWING MORE MONEY INTO IT.

social security was designed as a pay as you go system. it needs to return to that design & to stop being used as a slush fund for hidden interests. and incidentally a way to confuse people about how it works so they don't realize how much they're being scammed.

[Pigheaded]

27. This /\ /\ /\

[indurancevile]

28. what is that?