Raise Taxes If It Saves Social Security, Americans Say

Raise Taxes If It Saves Social Security, Americans Say

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans say go ahead and raise taxes if it will save Social Security benefits for future generations. And raise the retirement age, if you have to.

Both options are preferable to cutting monthly benefits, even for people who are years away from applying for them.

Those are the findings of a new Associated Press-GfK poll on public attitudes toward the nation's largest federal program.

Social Security is facing serious long-term financial problems. When given a choice on how to fix them, 53 percent of adults said they would rather raise taxes than cut benefits for future generations, according to the poll. Just 36 percent said they would cut benefits instead.

The results were similar when people were asked whether they would rather raise the retirement age or cut monthly payments for future generations – 53 percent said they would raise the retirement age, while 35 percent said they would cut monthly payments.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... f=business

Good to know that the overwhelming majority of the American People don't want the kind of snake-oil the teabaggers are selling. A few more years, and the tax-protestors will be irrelevant.

I've got the best idea. Quit having the employer pay SS & Medicare. Show it on the checks as it really is...coming out of the employee's income. When people actually realize they are currently putting 15.3% of their income in now, I'm sure they would be thrilled to bump that up to 20-25%, AND retire later.

So, the intention of the Huff piece is to bump payroll taxes, and not have an equivalent bump in benefits?

I agree, retirement age should be bumped though....

The point of the piece was to PAY FOR THE SYSTEM, rather than continually cutting benefits and screwing the seniors who have paid into it all their lives.

I've suggested two things over and over again... (The fact that the neo-cons don't like it is irrelevant to me...But I still think they're good ideas...)

1) Eliminate the $106,800 cap on income subject to the tax...If you make more than $106,800, you can afford to pay more into it.

2) Subject the SS benefits to means-testing. If you're making more than, say, $1million in your retirement years, you don't need to receive the same amount as someone who depends on it for their survival...

Let the friggin' military build a few less unnecessary tanks and bombers; and let the 1% pay their fair share.

So they phrased the question as increasing the Social Security takeout of their checks by 25%? If you laid it out that way, I am sure many people would not sign on to this plan.

Fix it.

"Many people", i.e. tax-protesting Republicans, have never liked it anyway, and openly admit that their goal is to kill it. I don't care about those people. If they hate it so much, they don't have to take it.

No one has "paid into the system" all of their lives. They have spent their lives paying for others who were already drawing benefits from the system and hoping that the generations following them don't change the way the system works and are willing to pay for them. Your 401K and your IRA - those are things that you have paid into over the years. Those are instruments that you have a private property right to. You don't have a right to a single dime from Social Security or MediCare - the Supreme Court has already told you that, if you were listening, when they ruled that it was constitutional in the first place and again with the ruling they issued in the 1960's in the Flemming v Nestor. This from the SSA web site:

There has been a temptation throughout the program's history for some people to suppose that their FICA payroll taxes entitle them to a benefit in a legal, contractual sense. That is to say, if a person makes FICA contributions over a number of years, Congress cannot, according to this reasoning, change the rules in such a way that deprives a contributor of a promised future benefit. Under this reasoning, benefits under Social Security could probably only be increased, never decreased, if the Act could be amended at all. Congress clearly had no such limitation in mind when crafting the law. Section 1104 of the 1935 Act, entitled "RESERVATION OF POWER," specifically said: "The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this Act is hereby reserved to the Congress." Even so, some have thought that this reservation was in some way unconstitutional. This is the issue finally settled by Flemming v. Nestor.

In this 1960 Supreme Court decision Nestor's denial of benefits was upheld even though he had contributed to the program for 19 years and was already receiving benefits. Under a 1954 law, Social Security benefits were denied to persons deported for, among other things, having been a member of the Communist party. Accordingly, Mr. Nestor's benefits were terminated. He appealed the termination arguing, among other claims, that promised Social Security benefits were a contract and that Congress could not renege on that contract. In its ruling, the Court rejected this argument and established the principle that entitlement to Social Security benefits is not contractual right.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/nestor.html

Democracy4Sale wrote: Fix it.

I agree - it is time to fix the foundational flaw that the program is built upon. That foundational flaw is that current workers are not paying for their own needs when they retire, they are paying for the current needs of those currently receiving benefits and passing along the cost of taking care of them to the generations behind them. That's the problem that needs fixing.

Edited to add:
When the government is willing to fix the problem, I will be willing to pay more in taxes to effect the fix and to ask everyone else to do the same. Unless that foundational problem is fixed, I am unwilling to support increasing the taxes yet again. Tax rates and income subject to taxation have already more than quintupled in my lifetime because the foundational problem hasn't been addressed. Workers need to be funding their own benefits, not laying the burden of paying for their benefits on the posterity.

The employee portion of the SS payroll tax is now 4.2% (was 6.2). Hasn't anyone figured out yet that Obama and the Democrats in Congress have no intention of ever raising it back to 6.2, never mind higher? Just add the shortfall to the deficit and shifting funds around is now the new normal.

Democracy4Sale wrote:
2) Subject the SS benefits to means-testing. If you're making more than, say, $1million in your retirement years, you don't need to receive the same amount as someone who depends on it for their survival...

So penalize the savers again? Already you have the Fed paying us savers 1 and 2% on our money, but you also want them to lose the benefits they have been paying in for decades because they are thrifty and smart.

Pay benefits instead to the people who blew their income on toys and did a better job hiding their savings? Sounds fair to me.

Pay benefits to those that need them. And if you're lucky enough to be making $1million + in your retirement years, mozel tov.

Yes... It is fair.