Help the vulnerable by reforming Social Security

[RicROC]

1) Remove the cap, not merely lift the cap.
This should be embraced by the Repubs since they love the flat tax concept, IF they have to pay any tax.

2) Drop the %-age rate of payroll tax.
With more income due to the removal of the cap, it would be possible to drop the rate from 14% to 6%. THIS would be a win for the Dems. So simple. No more talk of Dems always raising taxes.

3) a) Drop taxing Social Security benefits. It's double taxation as it is.

or b) Drop taxing SS benefits until the payout to each individual reaches the amount they have contributed, and then tax benefits beyond that.
( I don't like this concept. Not that it's complicated because it's not. Besides, it really does not help the vulnerable, which is the premise of reforming SS)

4) Raise the benefits for everyone.
No way should the benefit for an individual be less that what the government declares to be poverty level. A good start might be 1.5x the poverty level as a bare minimum. In Germany, the rate is about 50% of the last years wages, not based totally on the amount paid in. Top rate reported to be close to $5000/ month + pensions.

5) Return pension fund control to the workers.
St. Ronald Reagan turned the pension control over to the corporations which failed to properly fund them and then lost them if bankruptcy occurred. They were sold as part of the sale of the company, too. And, then on top of that, he instituted the first taxation of SS benefits. Hence, contemporary workers have few pensions and rely completely on savings and SS. There is no 3-legged stool upon which FDR style retirement was based.

[Sherman A1]

1. Interesting

I believe I agree with most everything you have listed.

[Voltaire2]

2. regarding 3

All that has to be done is to index the income level with inflation. It was set to 25K back in 83. It ought to be 65K.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Sounds good.

We're going to have to do something sooner or later to get guaranteed income for people. So many jobs and businesses have been lost, and many of them aren't coming back. Some of it is due to Covid and some is due to increased automation, and I don't think we're going to have enough jobs to go around. We're going to need something along the lines of what Andrew Yang proposed in order to keep the economy afloat.

[Hestia]

4. I like 5 - fully fund pension and make it moveable if you change jobs. My uncle was wiped out when

the airline he worked for for 30 years went belly up.

4 - agree with also

3a - how is it double taxation? Or make it like 401k/403b and treat the amount as pre-tax deduction.

Joe's idea is raise SSI from, what is it, $135k to $450k. Once the SSI funds are taken out of the federal general fund again, then have a big discussion of dropping rate, at least for employees and keep it for employer if they have X amount of gross earning and not allow as a employee CoE and deduction. That's what chews everything up, being allowed to deduct everything. If an employee can't claim it, neither can an employer, which includes private hedge funds.

[Hoyt]

5. Sounds good. But there is no way even Democrats will remove the cap. They might raise it,

that's likely. But in a period where we need increased taxes for healthcare, education, college debt reduction, unemployment, deficit and debt reduction, child care, etc., there is no way we'd institute a 12.4 percentage point tax increase just for Social Security.

Further, you'd have to increase benefits for those paying in more too.

Now, increasing the benefits for those on the lowest end is definitely possible and needed.