this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
478 points (98.4% liked)
Work Reform
16817 readers
1731 users here now
A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The reason this works out that way is because there is a wage base for the social security tax. If you don’t make more than that base then you pay that tax all year long. If you’re making 1m then you pay that tax for like the first two months and then nothing afterwards. The solution to this is just removing the wage base. If you make 1m you should pay the same percentage as everybody else on all your earnings. Magically the social security system will be overfunded.
With Social Security, the amount you get out is directly related to the amount you pay in. So if the cap is increased, yes, social security will get more income, but they'll also need to start paying out a whole ton more.
It's more of a forced savings/investment account than a wealth redistribution scheme. There is some redistribution happening, but not as much as most people think.
Social security benefits shouldn't be proportional to income, it should be a set amount that everyone is eligible and it should be collected proportional to income including capital gains and everything else.
It's a progressive payout though. SSA pays out 90 percent of average monthly income over 35 years (approximate based on their formula. AIME) below the first "bend" at about 1200 dollars per month, 32 percent between the first and second bend, and 15% above the second bend. So SSA would get 10.6 percent of every new dollar that used to be above the cap, while that dollar would increase the person's benefit by their marginal rate (likely 32 or 15 for a high earner) divided by 420 months (you could assume the person will have a 35 year retirement to cancel out the two sides of the equation). Turning 10.6 percent into 15-32% (and most of the uncapped money would be likely to fall in the 15% if I had to guess) shouldn't be a hard thing to do for SSA with extra funds to spare when you consider that the average retiree won't live for a 35 year retirement and that there are 35 years of gains to capture between money in time vs money out time
So what you're saying is, social security should be, like...social?
It'd also be nice if it offered actual security.
The other thing to get rid of is long term capital gains taxes and just tax capital gains as regular income.
Explain please? It's about the tax rate between those two? I thought the problem with CGT is that people dodge it by taking loans secured by their capital/stock. This does not seem to fix this problem...
“Normal” people do not avoid paying these taxes by taking loans with their accounts as collateral. That applies only to multi-billionaires.
Most people pay a lower tax rate on long-term capital gains as compared to income. Raising this rate could discourage investing.
LTCG means that I can 15% or 20% (depending on income) on selling stock even if I'm otherwise in a high tax bracket. Why should I get to have a massive tax break just because I already have a lot of income? There's nothing special about my income from stock vs. my income from employment other than I work a hell of a lot harder for my income from employment than I do my income from stock.
0% if your taxable income is under $96,700 as a married, filing jointly household.
But... If there cap is 184k, when you retire and get your SSI check, you won't get more than the next person if you made 1m vs their 184k.
I think the point is the wealthy people are less likely to be reliant of SSI in retirement. So they don't want to pay into it any more than they have to. If they paid more, they'd end up getting more, so while temporarily it'd be funded better sooner, SS would just pay more out later and still be broken.
If you are reforming SS to raise the cap, why wouldn't you also reform the payment end as well? There is no reason that the wealthy should get enormous SS payments they don't need, and allow that to cripple SS for those who do need it.
I can hear the parasites now: "It isn't fair! The poors get all the breaks!"
And so what? If I pay taxes and never use WIC, is that wrong in some way?
Social Security also funds SSI disability, most of us won't use that but we pay for it. That's how taxes work.
The cap should be removed, it's a tax not a pension plan. We can cap the benefits (higher than it is now) without capping the deduction. Anyone making $1M/year is still going to net hundreds of thousands more than someone making $200K. And both of them will be fine.
We're talking about a cap and not a base, but yeah... remove the cap and everything gets better.
That’s effectively what it is but it’s called the social security wage base.
TIL - interesting language... even the article goes on to call it a cap multiple times even though the official title is what you listed. Thanks for sharing!
Welcome to American politics: where the rules are made up and the words don't matter
Over funded how? Right now they still collect social security. Are you suggesting they should pay more into SS and then collect less to turn it into a tax?
Yes.
YES
Pay their fair share is what it is called.6