Raising the Social Security Payroll tax 1/2 of 1% for People and Companies
Dale Coberly presents another methodology to save Social Security without cutting benefits to the elderly. Any of these will work and does not involve taxing the rich which could result in a reversal with each new administration. It is incremental and small portions of a dollar or two on a weekly basis. And it still keeps SS as the third rail.
Starting in 2026 with . . .
Raising the payroll tax one half percent each for people and companies in 2026. This is half of what polls have said people prefer to any cuts. Too small for anyone, even employers. to really feel bad about.
Starting the next year continue to raise the payroll tax two tenths of a percent per year. this is two dollars per week per year. again, too small to notice.
Stop raising the tax in in 2034 at 8.3% each. this is actually two years after SS has reached long term actuarial solvency. By then no one should notice. the extra two tenths of a percent will eliminate the moving window problem for a long time. maybe forever if current thinking among the actuaries turns out to be correct.
My guess is most people will love it, if the bad guys don’t convince them they can’t afford it. We need to remind them it is what it takes to feed themselves when they can no longer work. or don’t want to work and can afford to retire because they paid for it themselves . . . out of an income that should be about four times (real money) than they have today. I mean REALLY remind them. they don’t think clearly and the bad guys will be making them think their taxes are going up sixteen percent and they’ll never see a dime of it. and it will be a crushing burden on the young.
Anyway. i think it does what Mike said we need to do: show them something that makes a difference.
Btw: this also eliminates the short-range financial inadequacy immediately and permanently. While in its first year it moves the trust fund zero date about ten years into the future.
It’s aggressive, but it stops a “problem” that has been eating away at us since Bush2 told everyone that SS was “broke. flat busted” . . . or even before that, when Gingrich and Clinton agreed that raising the retirement age was “the obvious solution.”
And, did I say, it doesn’t cost the government a dime. does not increase the deficit/national debt . . . and the bigger TF will lend money to the country to help keep regular taxes down.
This started out as a letter to a friend to see what he thought, It contains a couple of references that might be too obscure for the general reader. But I hope it will provoke some thought. This sentence: “It is incremental and small portions of a dollar or two on a weekly basis.”
could be misleading. The plan under consideration is to raise the payroll tax one half of one percent in 2026 and follow that with a two tenths of one percent each year until 2034, for a total raise of 2.1% to a final tax rate of 8.3% for the worker and for the employer.
This may look like a huge raise to some people. But a tax increase of 2.1% over ten years would not be felt. Incomes will go up about ten percent real over that time. And the cost is exactly what you would have to pay, or save, to have enouogh to live on anyway when you can no longer work…whether there was Social Security or not. The difference between Social Security and other forms of saving is that it is guaranteed to be there, and to beat inflation, no matter what.
Except for the chance of the people letting a criminal Congress cheat them out of Social Security by scaring them with lies about “insolvency” “debt” “burden on the young” “ponzi scheme” and nearly every other thing that has come out of the mouths of politicians and paid liars over the last 30 years.
The only thing I can think of to prevent them getting away with it is if the people can organize to tell Congress in a way they can’t pretend not to hear that they want to keep their Social Security and want to keep paying for it themselves so no one can take it away from them.