Save Social Security - Go!

Alright geniuses, tell me your quick and easy plan if you had unlimited political capital and an informed, engaged electorate.

Jor El wrote:Alright geniuses, tell me your quick and easy plan if you had unlimited political capital and an informed, engaged electorate.

It's too late to save it

Set it adrift

Make everyone pay into no matter where their income comes from. If you make all your money from dividends or capital gains you still pay into it. Put a limit on what is taxed for it though, say $200k.

Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.

Jor El wrote:Alright geniuses, tell me your quick and easy plan if you had unlimited political capital and an informed, engaged electorate.

Remove the cap, pay SS tax on all income. That alone would probably give the program another 50 years.

http://www.actuary.org/content/play-social-security-game

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/planning-to-retire/2013/02/13/5-ways-to-fix-social-security

Make the coming generation pay for the mistakes of their parents and grandparents.

LooseGoose wrote:http://www.actuary.org/content/play-social-security-game

Raise the level that SS can be taxed, reduce COLA, raise the age level for full benefits, means test, and include state and govt employees. Got me to 100%, In fact I did it several ways and always got to 100%. Both sides of the political spectrum play the fear card. I'm also not against giving some people the option of opting out and allowing them to invest their SS taxes the way they would with a 401k.

Bottom line, there a numerous ways to skin this cat and it's been so politicized that nothing will end up happening out of fear monging.

Hunger Games. Except, for old people. And we'll use 100 from every state instead of 2. And we'll do it every other week.

Jor El wrote:Alright geniuses, tell me your quick and easy plan if you had unlimited political capital and an informed, engaged electorate.

Start switching over to privatization.

It gone. This won't end well.

Ultimately the correct answer is it won't get fixed because politicians are pretty much all pussies who are doing nothing more than attempt to get reelected. They aren't concerned with fixing shit.

It's easy to get to 100%, but here's the solution for a good portion of our deficit / debt problems:

1. Eliminate loopholes. Yes, this is easier said that done, but I'm not a tax attorney so I can't point to them.

2. Raise personal income taxes on the top 15, 10, 1, .1, .01% of earners. If you're making > $100M a year, you can be paying well over 50% in taxes.

3. Don't listen to LoneWolf Sparty.

Those three things would solve a good portion of our problems

FTR: I delayed a year, decreased benefits for the top half, and increased cap.

Easy enough.

You know how I know we're fucked?

15% of you think we are already fucked and the remaining 85% of you think the solution is 100% on the revenue side of things.

Game. Fucking. Over, commies... game over...

tTy wrote:You know how I know we're fucked?

15% of you think we are already fucked and the remaining 85% of you think the solution is 100% on the revenue side of things.

Game. Fucking. Over, commies... game over...

You want to tax over 50% of income from the 1% and then call others commies. You're an idiot

I missed the option in the game to require the government general fund to pay back the billions of dollars they borrowed from the Social Security System to balance the general fund budget to pay for worthless bullshit pork projects in order to buy votes for other worthless bullshit pork projects.

I also missed the option to return Social Security to a retirement system and to eliminate the bullshit wellfare benefits that got lumped under social security by the numnuts in Washinton because they were too afraid to ask voters to fund their wellfare programs directly.

Fix those two issues: make Social Security its own program and protect it from raiding by the numbnuts, and were fine. I like the concept of allowing people to invest for their own retirement, but I lack the faith than 90% of people will actual do so, which would leave us with a significant level of impoverished old folks needing taxpayer funds to pay for their retirement anyways.

Rook wrote:I missed the option in the game to require the government general fund to pay back the billions of dollars they borrowed from the Social Security System to balance the general fund budget to pay for worthless bullshit pork projects in order to buy votes for other worthless bullshit pork projects.

I also missed the option to return Social Security to a retirement system and to eliminate the bullshit wellfare benefits that got lumped under social security by the numnuts in Washinton because they were too afraid to ask voters to fund their wellfare programs directly.  

Fix those two issues: make Social Security its own program and protect it from raiding by the numbnuts, and were fine.  I like the concept of allowing people to invest for their own retirement, but I lack the faith than 90% of people will actual do so, which would leave us with a significant level of impoverished old folks needing taxpayer funds to pay for their retirement anyways.

Stop making sense. RBW and his ilk just think raising taxes fixes it, and everything else under the sun.

Ass Dan wrote:

You want to tax over 50% of income from the 1% and then call others commies. You're an idiot

Redin kopmrahenshun. You suck at it.

RBW Spartan wrote:It's easy to get to 100%, but here's the solution for a good portion of our deficit / debt problems:

1. Eliminate loopholes. Yes, this is easier said that done, but I'm not a tax attorney so I can't point to them.

2. Raise personal income taxes on the top 15, 10, 1, .1, .01% of earners. If you're making > $100M a year, you can be paying well over 50% in taxes.

3. Don't listen to LoneWolf Sparty.

Those three things would solve a good portion of our problems

FTR: I delayed a year, decreased benefits for the top half, and increased cap.

Easy enough.

Where Do You Rank as a Taxpayer?

The latest numbers from the IRS—based on just released data from 2011 tax returns—show what it takes to be among the top 1% of income earners: adjusted gross income of $388,905 or more. That’s 5.2% higher than it took to buy into this rarified status a year earlier. The 1.37 million Americans with this elite status reported 18.7% of all the country's taxable income.

That's right. One percent of taxpayers reported almost 19% of all taxable income. And that same tiny group kicked in 35% of all the taxes paid. (A year earlier, the top 1% of earners kicked in 37% of all taxes paid.) How much do you need to make to be in the top 50% of earners? Just $34,823.

Fall below that level and you are in the bottom half, along with about 68 million of your fellow taxpayers. All told, that group earned just 11.5% of the AGI reported on 2011 federal returns. And they paid 2.89% of all the income taxes paid.

fix social security? reagan told us it was fixed forever!

my whole working life i have paid in at the highest 6% level in order to build a surplus that would get through the baby boomers. trouble was, congress tied the cap to inflation instead of wage increases. greenspan figured taxing the first 90% of wages would get us over the hump, but we currently only tax somewhere in the low-80s percentage due to rapid increases at the top end, and stagnation of middle class wages. get it back to 90% and it will be manageable.

other option that i liked, was give everyone a deduction for 120% of the poverty level, and pay X% on the rest, including income of all kinds. eliminate all other taxes, including SS, medicare, business taxes, etc. i think i read X would be somewhere in vicinity of 25% to cover operating the gubmint no deficit. maintain the current debt, and inflate it away.

Another option. Get rid of the money grubbing federal government that sucks in and spends dollars like there is no tomorrow.

Notorious GiB wrote:Ultimately the correct answer is it won't get fixed because politicians are pretty much all pussies who are doing nothing more than attempt to get reelected. They aren't concerned with fixing shit.

And they can just keep printing dollars to pay benefits. Whether the dollars will be worth much, a different question.

Jor El wrote:Alright geniuses, tell me your quick and easy plan if you had unlimited political capital and an informed, engaged electorate.

If the U.S. had an informed, engaged electorate, I would abolish Social Security because we wouldn't need it.

Giant Moose wrote:
If the U.S. had an informed, engaged electorate, I would abolish Social Security because we wouldn't need it.

Chicken & the egg.