Social security

Sry for the jibberish, I was multitasking and lost my track for a sec. But the point stands. As GGMM has stated a few times, it's essentially an insurance policy. Your paying for future income. There is a direct correlation from your contribution to the amount you reclaim. If you look at it objectively, it's already a game of diminishing returns. If I make $160,199 a year and my neighbor makes 15K a year. If we both retire at 65. I paid 11x more into the system than him, am I going to draw 11x more than him? No! At the most roughly 3.5x. so, aren't the top earners already paying more in and get less out?

@Rio: I know and understand that the current regulations on social security are. Re-quoting them again and again doesn't change my argument. You cannot lift the rules on end and it not effect the other. It'd be like having a $200,000 insurance policy on your house and the premium to match. House burns down and the insurance company says you can have 50K instead of your 200K you paid for, because your neighbor only has a single wide & it wouldn't be fair.

stop it....what is the max that can be drawn?

here it is...The maximum Social Security benefit in 2023 is $3,627 at full retirement age. It's $4,555 per month if retiring at age 70 and $2,572 if retiring at age 62. A person's benefit amount depends on earnings, full retirement age and when they take benefits

you claim all this fraud in your project, then back track to a dead beat ( your words) relative...it is your civic duty to report a crime..be part of the solution..not the problem

OMG! Can you imagine how much he would draw! At least Soros Jr.. I mean.. the first one is nearly Dead.. but if you remove the cap on incoming and be necessity the one one drawing.... He'd draw like million a year...

@marion...wrong...I am not saying any of that...and this is getting boring....for you republican conspiracy mongers..it does mean George Soros has to pay more

Its nice to see that we do have a few in here that are not brain dead.

Mickey

5: who was that directed at? I have several people blocked & have been blocked by several more. So, I'm only seeing half the conversation.

If you don't like it here, I hear Somalia is beatiful this time of year.

And you could probably get away with not paying any taxes...

Sorry but you are now living in the most corrupt, dangerous mismanaged Banana republic. We have become the kaughingstock of the world due to people like you.

We can’t even keep up with China any longer because a large portion of our country has a mindset like yours.. You of course don’t care what happens.

@Rio: if you remove the cap on one side, you have to remove the other one. Otherwise it's called strong armed robbery. The caps are either both there or both gone, you can't have it both ways.

there is a cap, for how much you cand draw. you know that

Taxes are the price you pay for living in a first world country...

Marion,

Think of SS as a very poorly run annuity. As it stands now .

The maximum Social Security benefit in 2023 is $3,627 at full retirement age. It's $4,555 per month if retiring at age 70 and $2,572 if retiring at age 62. A person's benefit amount depends on earnings, full retirement age and when they take benefits. That’s the maximum even if you earned 750K a year.

For 2023, the maximum limit on earnings for withholding of Social Security (old-age, survivors, and disability insurance) tax is $160,200.00. The Social Security tax rate remains at 6.2 percent. The resulting maximum Social Security tax for 2023 is $9,932.40.

Be aware that your Medicare premium can be elevated if you make over $160,000.00 per year.

Do I need the SS or Medicare? No.. but It was a forced investment I will not leave behind or to those whom have not earned it. It doesn’t shame me in any way shape or form. I will pay my guys just to exploit every loophole I can to get the money forced from me. Employees only pay 6.2 percent & I pay the other 6.2% on their behalf. And for doing that I get to pay 12.4% for myself. Because I make over 400K a year I get to pay lots more. I’m punished for doing better and for providing others a tax base.

This “government” is the most criminal corrupt government in the “free” world. And I know because I own homes in Sicily & Costa Rica.

COB says the increase to ensure solvency to 2096 is 5%. I'd have to not be in a moving motorhome to do a side by side comparison of the differing assumptions.

I have a stupid question. We're talking about raising the cap, so people making shit tons of money each year would have to pay more. Of course, those same people will also draw out of the pot... And, it's a direct correlation to your contributions..... Does anyone else see the problem with the math here? The ones being "targeted" to pay more, will absolutely bankrupt it when they start drawing. I can't even imagine what the SSI monthly stipend would be on a dude who payed in on a 750K/year salary. We barely crack the 100K mark & I'll be drawing close to half. GGMM said is was roughly 40%. So.... Mr 750K is going to draw 300K a year in SSI? How does this fix the problem?

"I think when people talk about raising the cap, they are not also talking about raising the percentage withholding."

Yes that is what most people are referring to. I was asking what, hypothetically, would the withholding rates need to be raised to using the current scheme to maintain solvency.

In other words - are we talking about raising/eliminating the cap to avoid an increase from 12.4% to 13.4%? 17% etc.

You then followed up with the answer. Thanks.

So really - am I understanding this correctly:

1. We could solve all of this by increasing 6.2% to 8%?

1. Hitting a few people for far, far more is preferable to everyone "doing their share"?

An increase of 6.2% to 8% would of course hit us too, and hit us twice as hard (percentage-wise) as most people, and hit us many times over as hard as a wage earner earning, say, $50k a year.

But somehow an increase that would hit us 4-10 times as much as your average Joe still ain't good enough.

We can eliminate most of the shortfall by removing the cap. Raising the percentages is unlikely to be required, although a few tweaks, including doing a better job of eliminating fraud, would be needed.

"It's insurance. I get that for some people it sucks. I feel much the same way about my dental insurance."

Social Security is not insurance. It is guaranteed retirement income that is designed to give you about 40% of your average lifetime salary.

Medicare is insurance, but with a difference, in that it's not designed so that the insurer makes a profit

ALCON: before anyone decides to accuse me of hating or supporting either of the shitty wings of the shitty bird of our shitty government.... I hate both parties equally & they both equally hate us. I consider myself a constitutional libertarian. In other words, I want to be left alone to make my own decisions, so long as they don't violate YOUR rights, with the same rules applied across the board equally.

@Rio: speak for yourself, you can contribute and manage your 401K just like everyone else. Mine grows year over year, because I don't leave it to the "experts" to manage. I contribute 20% pre-tax, my employer contribution is 5% of my gross & matches 1:1 up to an additional 5%. That's 30% of my gross every payday. I manage it closely and when I need a new vehicle or major household upgrade, I borrow against it & pay myself the interest. I'm a normal human being with a non stock market related job. If I can figure this out, most anyone else can. If your 401K looks like a yo-yo, that's your fault.

"Out of curiosity, is anyone aware of what the social security tax rates would need to (across the board) be raised to in order to resolve this?"

According to this article at CNN, the raising total tax rate (SS and Medicare) from the current 12.4% (+ 0.9% for high earners) to 16% total would extend the solvency by 75 years.

htt ps://w ww.cnn.co m/2023/04/08/politics/social-security-solutions/index.ht ml

"Out of curiosity, is anyone aware of what the social security tax rates would need to (across the board) be raised to in order to resolve this?"

I think when people talk about raising the cap, they are not also talking about raising the percentage withholding.

But I could be wrong.

It is a cost between personal and societal good.

I can certainly understand your opposition. I flirt with the cap every year, but they seem to raise it just enough so that most years I am below it.

And Social Security and Medicare have some of the lowest administrative costs out there.

It's insurance. I get that for some people it sucks. I feel much the same way about my dental insurance.

But that's the way insurance operates. There are winners and losers.

Out of curiosity, is anyone aware of what the social security tax rates would need to (across the board) be raised to in order to resolve this?

Usually I don't ask questions I don't already have a sense of the answer to, but in this case I really don't know. Would it be raising it from 6.2 to 7.2? 9.2? 12?

I should add...

I appreciate that something needs to be done, and honestly find it hard to believe that we will reach SSI age before some mechanism is in place to deal with it that will likely impact us, whether it be delaying the age, or denying benefits based on some income or wealth metric, or what have you.

My only point is that it's really easy to sit there and propose solutions that cost someone else a shit ton of money.

The biggest political problem is that many of the people whom such a cap raise would hit the hardest are people like Mrs. VA and I. Self-employed earners in the upper-middle income category who would effectively be hit with watching our effective tax rate climb dramatically because we pay both employer and employee parts.

Maybe to some this isn't a political problem. Probably most people here simply don't care, or even think we somehow deserve it. It's already a system where we pay in far more than we could ever take out, unless we live to be 300. Making that situation even worse is a pretty big motivator for political donors.

If someone making $400k a year is facing $30k a year or more in additional taxes for the remaining 15 years of their working life, they would be staring down such a change costing them more than half a million and possibly delaying or greatly diminishing their retirement, that's more than enough to incentivize them to try to stop it.