[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

You probably need to do more research and math on your proposal.

You want to collect $100/month from those making $400,000 but then increase their benefits by $1,500/month while they are retired. Since most of us won't be working 15 times as long as we are retired, that is a losing proposition.

Oh, it looks like your $100/month is a bit off too. Since the employee's portion of FICA withholding is 6.2%, the additional withholding for someone making $400,000 would be $14,880/year or $1,240/month.

Okay, at $1,240 extra/month while working, the additional payment about balances out the $1,500 in benefits but at best this is a net zero since all his payments would come back to him in retirement with nothing left over for anyone else.

No that would be $100 MORE per month than they're already paying. Not $100/month total. That's why I said $100 more. More = in addition to. It sounds like you're really working hard to cherry-pick and eliminate details like - interest accrual, the fact that the current generation pays for the generation following it and is paid by the previous generation - that's how the system is set up to work, intentionally. And let's not forget that some people die before they can get back what they put in. And let's also not forget all those immigrants who are here legally on work visas - who pay into Social Security and are not ALLOWED to take any of it out.

My suggestion was to increase the cap - which is only $160,200. That means - if your paychecks came to $160,201, you pay $0 on that last dollar. If your paychecks came to $1,160,201, then you pay $0 in social security taxes on the million, you ONLY pay it on the $160,200. My suggestion was to increase that cap to $250,000.

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

No that would be $100 MORE per month than they're already paying. Not $100/month total. That's why I said $100 more. More = in addition to. It sounds like you're really working hard to cherry-pick and eliminate details like - interest accrual, the fact that the current generation pays for the generation following it and is paid by the previous generation - that's how the system is set up to work, intentionally. And let's not forget that some people die before they can get back what they put in. And let's also not forget all those immigrants who are here legally on work visas - who pay into Social Security and are not ALLOWED to take any of it out.

My suggestion was to increase the cap - which is only $160,200. That means - if your paychecks came to $160,201, you pay $0 on that last dollar. If your paychecks came to $1,160,201, then you pay $0 in social security taxes on the million, you ONLY pay it on the $160,200. My suggestion was to increase that cap to $250,000.

Once upon a time there was a relationship between what people put in and what they could eventually take out. What you are suggesting is a tax on people making over $ 160,000. That was not the purpose of SS.

[Marmaduke]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

When you go to a restaurant, do you demand to see the ID of the white waitress who doesn't have a foreign accent? No? Why not?

When you walk into a bank - not even gotten as far as the line for the tellers - does a manager walk up to you and demand to see your ID? No? Why not?

When you are driving through a neighborhood and stop at a stop sign, does someone rush out of their house and demand to see your ID? No? Why not?

Answer: because your skin isn't brown.

The people who are HARASSED with this kind of behavior - are not white Americans. Yes everyone gets their ID checked. But not everyone is harassed for it by random strangers whose jobs don't involve checking IDs.

And yes - every example I just posted in this post has happened to people with brown skin, and similar incidents happen to them all the time. They are targeted and harassed because of their skin color. Puerto Ricans are told "you don't belong here, go back to your own country." Because a) all brown people look alike so obviously these must be illegal aliens, or b) some people skipped the history class where they were taught that Puerto Ricans ARE American citizens and DO belong here. Or possibly both.

There are people who think that if someone has brown skin and works as a home aid, then obviously they're illegal Haitians. And deserve to be harassed whenever they're seen wearing their uniform or scrub shirt outside their client's home.

It happens ALL THE TIME. Unless you're white. Then it doesn't happen.

Are we as United States Citizens really that bad, in your mind?

I clearly understand that you are a knock down, drag out verbalivious fighter, but I do not get why you bring a cannon to battle us almost daily.

Did your fellow man upset your apple cart to make you a crusader or...What's REALLY going on your world?

Just curious why you think members of the Greatest Generation and their offspring comprised of generou$, caring, loving people are evil, as only you tell us we are on a regular basis.
I am not enjoying your insults to me, my family or my friends. We do not deserve this constant berating and blather. Chill!

Breathe Deep.

[djplong]

It is SO much easier to say people don't want to work anymore. The truth is far different.

1) Unemployment is down below pre-pandemic levels. People DO want to work.

2) You failed math if you think that unemployment benefits are more than the paycheck you got to earn them. Remember? You DID have to work to qualify.

3) Research shows that it's not an unwillingness to work. It's being fed up with being paid poverty wages and having companies cry poverty while reporting record profits.

The perfect case is my older daughter. Stuck in a job she loved with management she hated at very low wages. She found a new job that paid TWICE as much, not perfect but still doing what she's good at, with a career path to higher management and senior management who actually listen to the people they hire.

Her old boss is complaining people don't want to work.

No, sir, they do not want to work FOR YOU.

The younger generation has an increasing number of members who are seeing the man behind the curtain. They have friends in foreign countries thanks to the internet and see how employees are treated there and are deciding they have had ENOUGH.

[jimbomaybe]

Originally Posted by melpetezrinski

I like how you prefaced your opinion on "potential workforce". It gives you an out when someone says, have you seen the HISTORICALLY LOW unemployment rate.

The employment rate is an important stat, equally important is the participation rate that has not recovered from covid injected money add to that the baby boomers leaving the workforce, fewer workers , less productivity, higher proportional taking out than putting in, the SS welfare system being the third rail politically and believe it or not there is a limit on just how much debt governments can take on without the system breaking down , just as there is a limit on how much you tax the productive to support the less productive, how will this all pan out? ancient Chinese cruse " May you live in interesting times"

[Bill14564]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

No that would be $100 MORE per month than they're already paying. Not $100/month total. That's why I said $100 more. More = in addition to. It sounds like you're really working hard to cherry-pick and eliminate details like - interest accrual, the fact that the current generation pays for the generation following it and is paid by the previous generation - that's how the system is set up to work, intentionally. And let's not forget that some people die before they can get back what they put in. And let's also not forget all those immigrants who are here legally on work visas - who pay into Social Security and are not ALLOWED to take any of it out.

My suggestion was to increase the cap - which is only $160,200. That means - if your paychecks came to $160,201, you pay $0 on that last dollar. If your paychecks came to $1,160,201, then you pay $0 in social security taxes on the million, you ONLY pay it on the $160,200. My suggestion was to increase that cap to $250,000.

I understood quite well what you wrote in post #36. I cherry picked nothing, I used all the information you provided.

That was not your suggestion in post #36. Your suggestion then was to raise the cap to $400,000 while raising the payouts to $6,000 for those averaging $250,000 in salary.

If this new suggestion of raising the cap to $250,000 also comes with the increase in payouts then the math is even worse.

Out of curiosity, how did you calculate your $100 MORE per month number?

[rsmurano]

Originally Posted by Whitley

Constant Harassment? Really. I have employed over 100 people for forty years. Many, like me, are beautiful and bronze poc. Where do you hear we are constantly harassed. I love this country, this state and the vast, vast percentage of great people that are fellow citizens. Sidenote, thinking "we" are unable or not sharp enough to obtain ID is insulting. BTW when do you think we are asked to show ID?

There is no constant harassment. That is just propaganda. Just like calling voting laws discriminatory by requiring you to show an id. We have needed to show Id for many things during our lives with no issues: buying beer, getting on a plane, buying/renting a home/apartment/condo, getting a loan, drivers license, registering at a library, buying a gun, all without any issues.

[huge-pigeons]

Social security was never meant to provide you all the money you needed to live on when you stopped working. You had the responsibility when you were younger to save for retirement and if you didn’t you only have yourself to blame.

People are lazy today and they want big government to provide them with what they need to survive. Our young people are not very bright these days and you can blame our teaching system. When schools think dumbing down curriculum and tests so everybody passes, how is that going to help get qualified surgeons/medical staffers into the field or having delinquents engineer our new planes?

There are states still paying people to stay home.

Why do people think that employers have to take care of you if you work for them a number of years?
Why do people complain about what CEO’s/company founders make or what management makes? All of this boils down to my statement above: people are lazy!

Decades ago, when I was 22, I decided that if I have to work, I was going to make the most money I could and I would do what it took to do it. So that required me to learn other technologies/skills after work hours so I could branch out to get to the next level. So I constantly took higher paying jobs with more demands and more stress up until I retired early comfortably. Went into management for a while but hated it plus I could get paid more for being a technologist.

So when I see people create companies that flourish and become billionaires, I congratulate them for doing the hard work required to get there. Others hate them, and imo, these are the lazy people that would rather complain than do something about their own livelihood to get to the level they want to be. Only you can control what you do and what you make in life. Government only gets in the way of progress.

[Laker]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

When you go to a restaurant, do you demand to see the ID of the white waitress who doesn't have a foreign accent? No? Why not?

When you walk into a bank - not even gotten as far as the line for the tellers - does a manager walk up to you and demand to see your ID? No? Why not?

When you are driving through a neighborhood and stop at a stop sign, does someone rush out of their house and demand to see your ID? No? Why not?

Answer: because your skin isn't brown.

The people who are HARASSED with this kind of behavior - are not white Americans. Yes everyone gets their ID checked. But not everyone is harassed for it by random strangers whose jobs don't involve checking IDs.

And yes - every example I just posted in this post has happened to people with brown skin, and similar incidents happen to them all the time. They are targeted and harassed because of their skin color. Puerto Ricans are told "you don't belong here, go back to your own country." Because a) all brown people look alike so obviously these must be illegal aliens, or b) some people skipped the history class where they were taught that Puerto Ricans ARE American citizens and DO belong here. Or possibly both.

There are people who think that if someone has brown skin and works as a home aid, then obviously they're illegal Haitians. And deserve to be harassed whenever they're seen wearing their uniform or scrub shirt outside their client's home.

It happens ALL THE TIME. Unless you're white. Then it doesn't happen.

Really? So bank managers make it a point to monitor the color of people in teller's lines, and rush out of their offices to harass their customers?

And people sit in their front window all day watching a stop sign and then try to catch up with a car before it pulls away so they can knock on the window and ask for ID?

Your assertions are so ridiculous they are laughable. My black roommate showed me how insulting your patronizing attitude is to blacks. He said "they think we're too stupid to see what they're doing. That's insulting".

Like they say, you're better off keeping your words to yourself rather than saying them out in public and making a fool of yourself.

[Caymus]

Originally Posted by Laker

Really? So bank managers make it a point to monitor the color of people in teller's lines, and rush out of their offices to harass their customers?

And people sit in their front window all day watching a stop sign and then try to catch up with a car before it pulls away so they can knock on the window and ask for ID?

Your assertions are so ridiculous they are laughable. My black roommate showed me how insulting your patronizing attitude is to blacks. He said "they think we're too stupid to see what they're doing. That's insulting".

Like they say, you're better off keeping your words to yourself rather than saying them out in public and making a fool of yourself.

That is one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes. “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

[Vermilion Villager]

Originally Posted by Marmaduke

Are we as United States Citizens really that bad, in your mind?

I clearly understand that you are a knock down, drag out verbalivious fighter, but I do not get why you bring a cannon to battle us almost daily.

Did your fellow man upset your apple cart to make you a crusader or...What's REALLY going on your world?

Just curious why you think members of the Greatest Generation and their offspring comprised of generou$, caring, loving people are evil, as only you tell us we are on a regular basis.
I am not enjoying your insults to me, my family or my friends. We do not deserve this constant berating and blather. Chill!

Breathe Deep.

If the truth hurts...........

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by Stu from NYC

Once upon a time there was a relationship between what people put in and what they could eventually take out. What you are suggesting is a tax on people making over $ 160,000. That was not the purpose of SS.

There was never a relationship between what people put in and what they took out. Ever. You can google (or bing or duck duck go) social security history. I'll summarize though.

Ida May Fuller is the first person to ever collect a social security check.

She retired from her job in 1939. She was eligible to collect from her earnings starting in 1937 til her retirement, so a total of three years worth of SS deductions. She paid in a total of $24.75. Twenty four dollars, seventy five cents.

At the time of her death, she had received $22,888.92 total in SS benefits. That's twenty-two thousand, eight hundred eighty-eight dollars, ninety-two cents.

That is how SS was set up, that's how it's always been. You put in what you put in, and that pays for the people who are currently collecting benefits. When it's your turn, the current working generation pays yours.

[Marine1974]

Until employers pay a decent wage there will be
labor shortages. Supply and demand .

[Vermilion Villager]

Originally Posted by huge-pigeons

Social security was never meant to provide you all the money you needed to live on when you stopped working. You had the responsibility when you were younger to save for retirement and if you didn’t you only have yourself to blame.

People are lazy today and they want big government to provide them with what they need to survive. Our young people are not very bright these days and you can blame our teaching system. When schools think dumbing down curriculum and tests so everybody passes, how is that going to help get qualified surgeons/medical staffers into the field or having delinquents engineer our new planes?

There are states still paying people to stay home.

Why do people think that employers have to take care of you if you work for them a number of years?
Why do people complain about what CEO’s/company founders make or what management makes? All of this boils down to my statement above: people are lazy!

Decades ago, when I was 22, I decided that if I have to work, I was going to make the most money I could and I would do what it took to do it. So that required me to learn other technologies/skills after work hours so I could branch out to get to the next level. So I constantly took higher paying jobs with more demands and more stress up until I retired early comfortably. Went into management for a while but hated it plus I could get paid more for being a technologist.

So when I see people create companies that flourish and become billionaires, I congratulate them for doing the hard work required to get there. Others hate them, and imo, these are the lazy people that would rather complain than do something about their own livelihood to get to the level they want to be. Only you can control what you do and what you make in life. Government only gets in the way of progress.

Please name them.......

[djplong]

Originally Posted by huge-pigeons

Social security was never meant to provide you all the money you needed to live on when you stopped working. You had the responsibility when you were younger to save for retirement and if you didn’t you only have yourself to blame.

People are lazy today and they want big government to provide them with what they need to survive. Our young people are not very bright these days and you can blame our teaching system.

You ARE right about Social Security never being intended to be the sole support of seniors. FDR even said it himself - that Social Security was supposed to be one of three legs of a stool to support retirees - the other two legs being a person's own savings and a company pension.

Well, company pensions are as rare as hen's teeth today.

Private savings are being walloped by the avarice of corporate America. One example is what the ratio of wages to average housing expenses are (rent or mortgage) or how many years of salary the AVERAGE price of a house is. Hint: It's ugly. I'm retiring in a few years and if I wasn't already in my house, I couldn't afford to buy it. In 1978 my mother bought a 3BR house in the 'burbs for $49,900 on a $30,000 annual salary. That house goes for SIX times that price now and incomes haven't increased by nearly that much.

The same has held true for post secondary education expenses. I took courses for $300/semester "back in the day". Just try finding that, adjusted for inflation, today.

This keeps younger people from saving money.

Younger people don't want the government giving them free stuff. They want, among other things, corporations to pay their fair share so that the people aren't bailing them out. We've done 40 years of supply side trickle-down economics and it's always the same story. People think that by giving the dragon more money, he'll share his hoard with the people - and it NEVER happens.

And it's often (not always) the corporations.

Find a privately owned business - like, say, Bucc-ees, and you're much more likely to find fair wages - because you're more likely to find senior management and executive who are happy with making a "fair profit". Introduce a corporate structure and suddenly, BY LAW, you are supposed to put shareholder returns FIRST. That makes a big difference.