Pundits and politicians frequently make an issue of the 2022 limit for SS taxes of $147,000 of wages – the taxable wage base. Higher income workers who make more than $147,000 annually don’t pay the Social Security tax on any earnings above that level.
Benefits from Social Security do not consider earnings above the taxable wage base so there is no inequity in the system UNLESS you want to change the very design of Social Security as a self-funded insurance program.
And that’s exactly what progressive politicians want to do.
Under newly proposed legislation, the payroll tax would kick in again for people earning above $250,000. Only the top 7% of earners would see their taxes go up as a result. In addition new taxes would be imposed on the “wealthy” in the form of taxes on investment income, but of course, with no additional benefits.
FAIR SHARE they claim. That’s a ruse. What is fair is a system that taxes earnings the same for all participants and calculates the benefits on those same earnings – just as Social Security was designed to do.
THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM is that one Congress after the other has failed to make required changes to Social Security and now we are closing in on a crisis. The answer is not to tell Americans the truth and ask all to share in the cost of funding – as should have been done decades ago – but rather to drag out the “fair share, wealthy, millionaires and billionaires rhetoric.” Thus reinforcing the idea that I can get more if only someone else foots the bill. The relief attitude.
Memo by Luther Gulick from his meeting with FDR.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
“What is fair is a system that taxes earnings the same for all participants and calculates the benefits on those same earnings – just as Social Security was designed to do. ”
So are you also proposing that SS should eliminate the 50% spousal benefit to be fair? Since when is most things in America fair? We don’t all start at the same point when we are born, nor do all have the same opportunities in our lives. Though we all have the same right to take advantage of or not take advantage of what opportunities we do have in our lives.
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Politics brought Social Security into being and politics modified it over the years and politics will continue to tamper with the program in the future.
In the 1930s the idea was to separate the program from any other relief program and now that attitude has long gone. The program is widely accepted and a good target for any political hack who wants a cheap way of getting some votes. It is not just Washington though, the idea of welfare is rampant in colleges throughout the country and among the mass media. Ten years ago a retired college teacher told me that the wealthy should pay more into social security, to which I responded that wouldn’t help because the maximum benefit would be raised and it would cost more . His response was no, leave the benefit the same and just tax the wealthy more. This from a guy who retired from one of the more expensive schools in the South.
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When the tax cap came off medicare and investment taxes were added… that was the camels nose sneaking under the tent. It wont be long until the entire camel is inside the social security tent too.
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No doubt, but Americans still think we can have all we want and not pay for it. The US one of the lowest taxes industrial countries in the world.
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