Why is there a ceiling on wages subject to SS & medicare withholding?

[eallen]

16. Regarding social security, that was FDR's purposeful design

Every increment of payroll tax provides an increment of additional future benefit. Not linearly -- the system builds in a good deal of progressivity. But there is no tax dollar going into the system that anyone pays that is just a tax, without it also being calculated to the benefit to the payer. That was something FDR famously wanted, as a moral and political aspect of the system. Click here, to read his view directly.

Now, the cap certainly could be extended, and keep to that principle. And that would indeed help the funding gap.