Nah…we have a spending problem with our huge bloated inefficient government that continually wastes money. Just another example:
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The answer to the Social Security crisis is to tax ALL earnings at 6.2% plus the 1.45% that is already being applied to ALL earnings. As we all know, there is a cap on the first $147,000 of your earnings being taxed at 6.2%. That $147k is being indexed each year, but taxing all earnings would be a tremendous help in not reducing future benefits to us boomers who have been paying into the system since 1973 in my case.
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I think it’s a bit of both.
If you aren’t going to cap the contributions then you shouldn’t cap the benefits either…
No doubt there’s waste. The answer isn’t to shut down every department and have a skeleton crew government. The military wastes money - so should we shut it down?
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Considering the Federal Government has 2.9M employees, we can cut quite a bit before we get to “skeleton crew”, no ? We should cut EVERY department budget by 1% each year until we aren’t running a deficit. Tax revenue continues to go up every year so that isn’t the problem.
During my career in airlines, rail, and mfg, I spent a lot of time dealing with people and regulations from the EPA, DOT, NBS, and a few other alphabet agencies.
It’s well known they ALL take last year’s budget then add X% for next year. There is zero effort or motivation to reduce or even control costs. None.
I have two close friends that work in two different departments of the Federal Government. When it gets to September, it becomes “spend our remaining budget” month so that they can justify at least the same amount for the following budget year. They take all kinds of meaningless trips and attend worthless conferences just to spend the remaining budget. This is what happens when you are a monopoly and don’t have to do anything to earn revenue. Surprisingly…there are so many people that don’t see the problem.
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What you both describe as a feature of “big government” actions is also prevalent in most commercial enterprises of any size.
And it’s not unlike the actions that any department head in any organization, public or private, would logically do. Expense items all have priorities attached to them and the items lowest on that priority list are taken care of last, and if the funding is going away you make the expenditure.
I witnessed this hundreds of times in my thirty years with IBM, in both public and private sector organizations, because I showed up at those places with products and services which addressed those lower priority but still justified solutions. I kept a record of those lower-priority needs and made it a point to beat my competitors to the guy making those decisions.
…but the difference is that I am not forced to support those commercial enterprises. Plus, companies don’t have unlimited borrowing capacity to backstop their frivolous spending.
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They aren’t? Unless you’re considering that benefits cease to grow past age 70? Or that WEP and GPO can be unfair? Or … ?
It comes with the territory, it’s a problem that comes with living in a free country governed by the people. Because our government is a child of many varied opinions, views, needs and wants, it is a conglomeration of many compromises.
The alternative is authoritarianism ruled by monarchs, dictators, religious zealots, etc.
Given a choice of the two, I prefer the messy, inefficient and clumsy democratic republic we now have.
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Yes, they are capped.
Contributions cap (a little over $9,900 in 2023):
Benefits cap (depends on when you started taking it):
https://faq.ssa.gov/en-us/Topic/article/KA-01897
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Yes, annual contributions are capped. But benefits are not. Taking retirement or spousal benefits early does reduce the amount you receive; taking them past full retirement age incrrases the amount received. But neither of those is really a cap, just an adjustment. One’s Primary Insured Amount benefit is calculated based upon the 35 years of highest wage indexed earnings, and adjusts up or down are made based upon whether one begins receiving benefits early or late.
When there is a maximum annual benefit you can receive…that means its capped.
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Depends on the Weather.
When Hell Freezes Over!
Capped would be if your earned benefit were say $6000, but a rule said that nothing over $5000 can be paid. There isn’t any such rule.
The maximum benefit you can receive at full retirement age is currently $3600 and change. How is that not a cap?
Where did you find that? It certainly doesnt fit with anything I’ve ever read.