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Still waiting for the outrage...
If by reform you mean stop raiding the fund and raise the cap on the SS tax then I agree to an extent, but we could save a hell of a lot of money by not constantly being at war.
The top 5% in the country own 82% of the wealth. The top 1% now own more than the bottom 80%. Your assertion that it can't be funded with an increase in taxes is incorrect. Take the cap off of the SS tax, or at least increase it. Not buying that people with that kind of wealth can't pay another few percent to make the system work. Also, your use of the original SS tax percentage is disingenuous, at best. There was not wealth disparity like there is now. The top 1% did not own such a large percentage of the pie when SS was initiated.
My numbers aren't way off and I'm not missing your point. I'll address your post one point at a time.
1) When you earn 80% of the income paying 87% of the tax is not unreasonable.
2) Of course the top 1% paid more than the bottom 90% combined. The top 1% owns more of the wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
3) The bottom 45% should pay less in taxes, they barely make enough money as it is.
4) We could increase SS tax by a reasonable percentage OVERALL and make it solvent. Your assertion that we could tax the top 1% and it would only remain solvent for one more year is ridiculous. No one stated to increase taxes on solely the top 1%... Your assertion, not mine. Stop playing games with stats and numbers and putting words into my mouth. An increase of 3.1% on the worker and the employer would increase SS funding by 50%, which is more than enough to keep it solvent for a long time to come.
I want everyone to notice here how Mike has been trained, wether he realizes it or not, by right wing pundits and news etc to cherry pick stats of "the top 1% vs the bottom 90%." .Notice he didn't compare the top 1% vs the bottom 99% because that wouldn't make his stats look good.
The truth is we need to lift the cap on the SS tax and have some sort of small increase in the SS tax... Probably between 1-3%. These libertarians simply don't want to pay taxes to help the people of this country. This movement has been started by the wealthy because they want you to believe that it's in your best interest to fight these taxes. The truth is that most of you will need your social security and won't have a cushy retirement like the wealthy. They have most of the pie and they want MORE.
First of all, you're cherry picking again. It's obvious that the top 1% alone can't handle the burden, so stop with the "would only last a year" crap. I've already covered that and it should be obvious. Secondly your number of 150 workers per beneficiary is asinine. Of course there were many more workers per beneficiary the first few years. It took time to get people into the system. Again, the program is workable with the things I've mentioned. All you are doing is presenting numbers that have been cherry picked and leave out another side of the equation. You see what you've been taught to see by conservative media.
So, if we increase the tax about 50%... That's a 3% increase in our overall tax, you seriously can't see how that would keep it funded?
A few things...
1) We have a deficit of that size because Trump cut taxes. We should change it back.
Funny thing happened, the govt is taking in more revenue this year than last year. There are so many factors than a simple tax cut or increase. So while I know tax cuts can't solve the problem of spending too much, its too simplistic to make the statement you just made. So no, we have a deficit this big because we spend too much and many of our biggest drivers of the deficit are on auto pilot and these programs are based on an ever growing population (back to the birth rate that conflicts with these to be sustainable). Every dollar taken over the last 80 years is spent in the same year its collected, there is not storehouse of SSI/Medicare money. This problem was identified 30 years ago and the only thing we've done to try to solve it is to tax more. The tax rate has almost doubled since I started working in the early 80s, we added the the increases on Medicare on those making more. Is it not logical to maybe look at this with a 2019 mentality versus a 1940 mentality.
2) I'm not saying double the taxes on the overall income of the top 20%. I'm saying increase the SS AND MEDICARE taxes by 33-100% . Have to look at the numbers to see what's appropriate.
This doesn't put much dent into the problem...you have to have a deficit that is smaller than your ability to grow the economy ( you can run a deficit that is 2%, when your economy is growing at 3%)...meanwhile we are taxing people that make over $200K 3.8% on medicare, this is a 100% increase just over those making less - It ONLY brings in about $20B per year. Chump change.
3) Business cannot always increase prices due to higher taxes. The price point is determined in large part by what consumers can afford to pay.