re: #80 A Mom Anon

Social Security has a simple fix. Raise the cap on the Social Security taxable amount of income to around 200K from the 103K it’s at now. That’s why a lot of Dems are pissed off because that solution never gets talked about. Only cuts and raising the retirement age. Raising the retirement age is fine for people who don’t have to get dirty or sweat for a living, but it’s kind of stupid to tell a construction worker or the guy who lays asphalt that he has no option but to work til age 70. And it’s ALWAYS the people who don’t get dirty(in the physical sense)at work who want to cut benefits and raise the retirement age. It’s a shitty solution that’s not necessary.

Personally, I believe the cap should be removed completely. If CEO Joe Snuffy can make $25,000,000,000 or athlete Jake Baseball can earn $125,000,000,000 then they can afford to cough up SS taxes on the whole amount. If we ensure that SS trust fund is inviolable and do that then we can push the retirement age back down to 60 even while raising payments to a living level while still having sufficient funding for everyone as well as providing more employment opportunities for younger folks by encouraging boomers to retire.

Of course we still need to significantly cut the defense budget, increase the amount of money spent on infrastructure and stimulus as well as expand medicare to cover anyone who lacks insurance. The last thing that needs to happen is marginal tax rates need to return to their 1980 levels since we now have 30+ years of proof that the cuts have failed in their stated purposes.

But before any of things I mention in this post happen we need to have an actual left of center Democratic presidency instead of our current right of center one.