Obama endorses Social Security expansion

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

They need to raise the age limits and get rid of the stupid ceiling and drop the percentage taken.  Is there any tax (other than maybe cig taxes) that affect the poor so much more than the rich?

I wouldn't call FICA a tax, because you are (theoretically) paying premiums directly into programs that you will benefit from later.

A tax isn't a tax if you maybe benefit from the programs you are funding with it at some point? 

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

They need to raise the age limits and get rid of the stupid ceiling and drop the percentage taken.  Is there any tax (other than maybe cig taxes) that affect the poor so much more than the rich?

I wouldn't call FICA a tax, because you are (theoretically) paying premiums directly into programs that you will benefit from later.

A tax isn't a tax if you maybe benefit from the programs you are funding with it at some point? 

Read what I said. FICA is directly tied to two social insurance programs - Social Security and Medicare. When your payments are directly tied to a service, that is a premium, not a tax. If you park at a parking meter at City Hall, is the money you drop in the meter a tax? Of course not, it's a parking fee. We should look at FICA the same way. Many other countries refer to such payments as exactly what they are - social insurance premiums.

From an employer point of view, yes, FICA can be considered a tax of sorts.

In that case the government should just tie portions of all the money it collects from us into different programs.  Then we won't have any taxes at all.  We can have a military premium, an education premium, an environment premium, a criminal justice premium etc etc.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I like Social Security and Medicare, but the part that comes out of our paychecks is absolutely, positively, 100% a tax and not a premium for a pension or insurance.  Granted, to make the programs more politically palatable, they been paraded around from the beginning as if they were simply a Government-operated pension/insurance plans, but they aren't and never were.

So SS and Medicare do not have market-based pricing and are treated differently under the law from private pension/insurance plans. That doesn't mean they are not pension or insurance programs. Every contribution you make to SS increases your SS benefit in the future. You can't say the same about education, the military, infrastructure, or any of the other things that actual taxes pay for. The government could end the programs tomorrow, but that would be a gross violation of their end of the social contract.

I'm far from the only person who believes that FICA is not a tax. Many people on both sides of the political spectrum, and arguably most in federal government, think so.

So where do I sign up to pay more contributions to increase my benefit?  Also, it's not every contribution.  Once you've worked 35 years, additional so-called contributions only increase benefits if they replace a prior year with a lower indexed value.

I work at a firm that does accounting, tax prep, and financial advising.  From the viewpoint of all three, FICA is a tax, and a slightly regressive one at that because of the cap on taxed earned income (somewhat balanced by the fact that benefits are taxed in the higher brackets).  Indeed, the benefits that are loosely linked to it make Social Security overall a program that benefits the middle class the least, tho because it currently is actuarially deficient, even they get a benefit. If the taxes were raised to make the program actuarially sound (or the benefits cut) then the middle-class would be the group screwed over most by Social Security.

Granted, it behooves politicians of all stripes to pretend it is not a tax but a pension/insurance scheme, but it also behooves them to pretend they can balance the budget by getting rid of waste.  Both fanciful notions are agreeable to the voters, but they have zero relevance to reality.

It is also not true that every contribution you pay in results in a payout since you have to have enough "work credits" for you to get any benefits at all.   

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I wish we could find a way to just get rid of the employer portion altogether, if not the employee payroll tax also.  It's got to be the worst possible tax in terms of job creation and wage increases.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I wish we could find a way to just get rid of the employer portion altogether, if not the employee payroll tax also.  It's got to be the worst possible tax in terms of job creation and wage increases.

Just replace the employee portion with a higher income tax and the employer portion with a higher capital gains tax.

Capital gains receipts by themselves would be much too small to ever replace the income from the employer portion, but yes, basically, some combination of these, if it ever becomes politically possible.  Or there is the idea of using a VAT to replace payroll and corporate taxes.

Also I agree with making it much more of a means tested program as you mentioned, though there should still be some benefits for those who manage a decent though not wealthy retirement, so that the incentive to save for retirement is not greatly diminished.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

There seems to be this assumption that "the rich" have enough income to tax away to finance just about everything that might be desirable. The dirty little secret is that folks making from 125K to 300K will have to pony up more in tax payments - substantially more - to make all these dreams come true.

The real "dirty little secret", Torie, is that individuals earning $125-$300k/year, not withstanding the absence of a chauffer or butler in their households, are rich. And un-mistakenly so.

Well, that is a subjective thing (Dems tend to be careful in categorizing "the rich" to use a number north of 200K to 300K since so many of their voters seem to be making 125K to 300K), and in any event, making 150K in Texarkana is very different when it comes to lifestyle, than making 150K in Manhattan.

as it is if you are putting two kids through college and taking care of elderly/sick family members.