Comment by NotSammyHagar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NotSammyHagar | Hacker News Reader

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Let's make sure social security is around forever, and available for those that actually need it. We can slightly increase taxes and slightly reduce benefits for wealthy people to keep social security working basically forever. I'm fortunate to be a highly compensated engineer. If I'm making say $250k a year, I could pay a little bit more in taxes to help the system be sustainable, and also more likely to be there if I do need it.

Taxes for this benefit are capped at $8,240 or 6.2% of salary up to $132,900 [1]. The reason taxes are capped is because benefits are capped. My company could pay a bit more in payroll taxes and they wouldn't care, they'd love to hire 5 more experienced and well compensated engineers like me. There's a similar issue on social security wages - let's say I accumulate $5 million in assets at retirement, I'm going to be earning a pretty good amount of income even when not working, so you could reduce my social security (maybe via extra taxes?). People grumble about that money, "it's mine, I paid for it my whole career" - and you did pay for it in taxes. But things like social security also serve as a crucial part of our weaker societal safety net in America. I want it to be there for people that need it.

I probably won't need it in retirement, but most people will. If I do lose all my money, or say I wasn't as lucky in my life and was hurt or not able to accumulate so much wealth, I want it to be there - for me and others.

[1] https://smartasset.com/retirement/social-security-tax-limit

>If I'm making say $250k a year, I could pay a little bit more in taxes to help the system be sustainable, and also more likely to be there if I do need it.

I'm all for helping those in need and having a safety net, but I don't think what you're advocating for is a realistic solution. Social security is in trouble because it was mismanaged - increasing taxes to offset the burden of mismanagement is a half solution, and likely only a temporary fix. Social security (as well as a multitude of other things) is in its current state because we Americans lack the necessary systems/skills/policies to manage it properly.

How is it mismanaged?

-On track to be insolvent by 2034

-Costs already exceed income for trust funds

-Costs will exceed income by 2020 for the entire program

-The OASDI tax rate has been increased 20+ times since Social Security's inception in order to keep the program viable.

Add an inability to even recognize mismanagement.

All of these points have been known for some time and were actually "designed into" Social Security reform legislation that was enacted in the 1980's. The American people (through their elected representatives) have chosen to indefinitely postpone additional reform that may address some of your criticisms.

Therefore it seems to me that the civil servants running Social Security have been doing exactly what they were expected to do so it still isn’t clear to me how they're mismanaging it.

These things all come because our elected american representatives how not put more money into it. For my entire life every year there has been a report that they needed to put a bit more in and although there have been small amounts it has never been enough added. Calling this mismanagement of the program is not accurate because it suggests that the money was somehow lost or misinvested by the leaders of the program somehow. The senators and representatives in congress didn't put the right amount of money in it to match the payouts they set.

One example - Medicare is insanely expensive. IIRC the US government spends more on healthcare than Canada (adjusted for population etc) due to the huge costs of the most expensive clients (old people) getting "free" gold-plated private healthcare.

Social Security != Medicare

And the health care is far from gold plated.

Here are two organizations you can join that advocate for Social Security:

https://socialsecurityworks.org/

https://www.epi.org/ (see https://www.epi.org/research/social-security/)

The US has a culture that believes that only suckers pay taxes, the willingness/desire to defer problems to future generations, and the inability to capture meaningful revenue from the extremely small percentage of the population that reaps the lion's share of the benefits of the economy.

The US gets more tax revenue from rich people than most Western European countries. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-...; https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/us-taxe...

> Income taxes in America are more progressive than in other rich countries--according to an authoritiative official study which, to my knowledge, has not been contradicted. The OECD's report "Growing Unequal", on poverty and inequality in industrial countries, includes a table that provides two measures of income tax progressivity in 2005.

US Social Security also pays out more than most Western European countries.

The US tax system is regressive by taxing earned income differently than capital gains. It also gives the truly wealthy an opportunity to indefinitely defer or avoid realizing gains. The "progressive" US tax code only targets high income/upper middle class individuals.

Taxing capital gains differently than income is a regressive element, one the US tax code shares with nearly every other country in the OECD. Overall our capital gains tax rates are on the higher end: https://taxfoundation.org/us-taxpayers-face-6th-highest-top-.... But the overall tax system is progressive.

The parent comment made a relative statement (comparison of US to Europe). You responded with an absolute statement (US tax code is not progressive). That’s completely irrelevant to his/her point.

> People grumble about that money, "it's mine, I paid for it my whole career" - and you did pay for it in taxes.

In most cases the governments of the day spent all those taxes. And then they borrowed some money and spent that too.

Now the younger generations are paying the piper, while the older generations expect the gravy train to keep chugging along like it’s still 1959.

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