A REAL SOCIAL SECURITY FIX

Unlike Bush's destroy-the-village-to-save-it fix. From Talking Points Memo courtesy of Eschaton:

It says that whereas the Trust Fund is scheduled to be exhausted in 2042 under current law, this change would keep the system solvent through 2079 (ed.note: under SSA scoring procedures they don't go past 75 years, thus the date 2079).

In 2079, the Trust Fund would be shrinking. But measured as a percentage of the annual budget of Social Security it would be slightly larger than it is now. Now, I don't know about you but that sounds like it extends solvency considerably past 37 years, not 7 years.

Another way of putting this is to say that simply making this one change, getting rid of the cap, would extend the solvency of Social Security well beyond the lifetimes of almost anyone living today.

Click here for the rest.

The cap that Josh Marshall is speaking about refers to the fact that once an individual reaches a particular level of wage income (I believe it's currently $75 or 80 k per year), all income above that level, for Social Security purposes, is untaxed. So someone bringing home, say, $150 grand pays the same SS tax as somebody bringing home $75 grand. Eliminate this upward limit, and the Social Security "crisis" has ended.

It's pretty obvious that any problems that SS has are not so major that we need to institute Bush's private accounts which will drain the trust fund of much needed revenue to the tune of trillions of dollars--that's why it's also obvious that the White House really has no interest in saving Social Security. No, they just want to destroy it because it's "socialism" and "socialism" is bad, very bad. But because most Americans believe that Social Security is quite good, they have to lie about it.

Fuckers.

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