No philosophy in it. Just an honest political-social opinion: I say boo on housewives, househusbands, and single-earner couples in general. You are, of course, free to disagree and be on the other side of the next election.
Nope. I made a conscious choice to not take on a provider role. (Or, if you'd prefer and can read the "flips" implied, I'm a strong, independent white man who don't need no woman!)
That’s fine. She will be taken care of without SS. That’s my job to ensure her life, and my kids, are taken care of if I exit early (which is likely). I would say; however, that a wife that stays home would “generally” raise better more well adjusted kids. That’s an economic benefit to all as they are less likely to become a drain on govt resources. That’s my general opinion before I get lambasted with single parent replies.
Appreciate your candid responses. Your choice is fine by me… But unfortunately we kind of need to reproduce. So…see above. The magnet of snatch nailed it.
I'm glad to pay for public education (Kindergarten through PhD) -- in fact, I believe the federal Department of Education should be pursuing a war of annihilation against private schools at every level -- and honored to train those who decide to become Gator Nukes! I'd be thrilled if single-earner couple supports shifted 100% to daycare supports... but that gets back to "Nordic" &c
But we at least agree that having higher earners pay taxes on their SS benefits is a form of means-testing, right? I agree, it would be simpler to just reduce the benefit for wealthy seniors and I'd be fine with that. That is certainly preferable to cutting benefits for all, including seniors who are totally dependent on their SS check every month. In any case, what Trump is proposing (eliminating tax on SS benefits) is a step in the wrong direction.
I do not support receiving less. If people truly need to retire early there is the disability component. People of means who choose to retire early should pay a higher decrement of the full amount.
Yeah sure, but why couldn't the government invest people's money in a way that benefits the people they take it from rather than themselves? Instead of being studiously invested it was used to artificially lower government borrowing rates by buying their own debt at below real inflation interest rates. And I'm not personally against SS. I do feel like that age bracket needs a safety net. As someone who makes over the income cap I feel like it should be lifted in unison with cuts to help balance the budget. But also it should be invested in more than what amounts to a money market account.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/en...nating the tax,revenue over the coming decade. 1.5 trillion over a decade. Small? Elon already needs to find about 2 trillion a year, the existing annual deficit. They have announced findings of around $100-$200 million. BTW this tax was enacted during the Reagan years to help lower the deficits and keep SS solvent.
I am sure this will be confusing to you, but try to follow. When companies pay employees income, they get a tax deduction, but the employees pay tax on the income. when companies pay the employer share of FICA, they get a tax break on their share of FICA they pay. But prior to the social security tax, the future employee SS income was not taxed. Taxing 50% of the future social benefits was essentially to equalize the tax treatment of wage income and future social security income that was funded by the employer.
like you I think we take an all of the above approach. My preference would not be to increase the payroll tax, but i wouldn’t outright oppose it. I do think the earnings cap should be raised substantially. I’m not against a modest raise in retirement age, assuming it is offset somehow for those in the lowest earnings brackets. I like your idea of decreasing early benefits for those of higher means who choose to file early. A couple of things have happened that have thrown the system out of whack - in addition to the general aging of the population. 1. As income inequality spread, the result was that a greater percentage of income was not subject to payroll tax. Increasing the payroll tax cap would help bring that back into historical ranges. 2. If you look at expected life spans by income bracket of 50 year olds, the lifespan spread between the highest and lowest quintiles has increased fairly dramatically. Most of the increased lifespans are experienced by the top 20-40%. Given they are living longer, it would make sense to pay them marginally less, either through increased SS age, fully taxing SS benefits over a certain amount, decrementing early elections as you have suggested, and/or perhaps increasing the maximum rate of social security at a slightly lower rate of inflation, like chained CPI. Also during working years future social security increases with wage growth. You could index the higher end at some combination of wage growth and CPI. It’s not a mathematically impossible problem but there is no political will to do anything, and now Trump wants to take it in the opposite direction.
I am totally against raising the cap…but it is a good idea for sure. From Google search: According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), raising the Social Security tax cap to apply the payroll tax to earnings above $250,000 could generate over $1 trillion in additional revenue over a 10-year period.
You’re letting your emotions get the best of you, and you want a simple, quick solution, that most likely would have several problems down the road. This travesty of government waste has taken decades to build. It’s not going to get fixed in a short period of time. While defense, Medicare, and Social Security must be reviewed and pared down, they are certainly not “the only way” to tackle deficit spending. Personally, I love the concept of DOGE and think it is great; open up the books on everything and allow people to see how the money is spent. So far, I believe that we all agree that we would prefer to have a tax break, more (good) infrastructure spending, more medical schools, or a million other things than to much of the crap that DOGE has found. You don’t overlook waste because it’s only a relatively small amount of the the total. One thousand .05% waste reductions = 50% total waste reductions. Don’t overlook the small shit!! That’s where a lot of the malfeasance takes place. Tax payer funds should not be going much of where it has been going, and that goes back to way before Biden. I have been in government contracting for most of my career. With good management and some needed FAR changes, the DoD spending could be reduced by 5-10% easily without loss of lethality. We always hear when a contractor screws up, but we don’t always hear that the government requested 500 requirements changes during development, and almost all drove a schedule slip and additional cost. I believe that Social Security can be easily stabilized with the proposal that I made earlier in this thread. Feel free to add to that framework. Which now brings us to Medicare, Medicaid, other medical subsidies, and general healthcare. Both parties at the state and federal levels have been fully bought out by the pharmaceutical, hospital, insurance, and ambulance chasing industries, as well as the AMA and other physician’s groups. They have all been complicit. While they may bicker a little bit about how much of the pie they all get, they all make damn sure the pie is baked on time, and that it gets bigger every year, and the politicians get two free pies for themselves. The failure to address this was and still is the failure of Obamacare. All of the providers got bigger and richer, and the consumers paid more for a lower quality product. The democrats have happily played this game while getting rich and moving the US to their panacea of single payer. The republicans have happily played this game while getting even richer and giving themselves a wedge issue to manipulate. I don’t have all the solutions, but I can smell crap when I’m close to it. Whether we like it or not, this is what we have to fix.
While we are not as far off on SS as it may appear we do have some differences. Mainly I want to turn it in into an actual safety net. One that is there for those in true need. But you are spot on with healthcare. Obamacare has been an abject disaster like Medicare that has led to the system becoming more and more fascist. Big Pharma/Big Insurance/Big Hospital Provider has diluted the Doctor/Patient relationship and caused cost to spiral out of control. Most doctors are employees now (to big providers). And that is not good. On a side note to give a small anecdotal piece of evidence to your point on associations and the such. We are implementing Sleep into our office as we build with the shot to integrative dental medicine. We are in the airway all day and sleep apnea is a major issue. While the CPAP is the gold standard. Sleep appliances can be huge in helping as well. But the system is so screwed up that only a dentist can legally make a sleep appliance. But only a MD/DO can prescribe a sleep appliance. Needless to say we finally found a company that opens the bottleneck enough for us to invest in it. It could be streamlined so much better!
