Should Congress de-link Social Security Taxes from Benefits?

One for the Honors Class. Lots of people are calling for Congress to eliminate the cap on Social Security contributions -- but not raise the resulting benefits. This would de-link the taxes one pays with the amount of benefits one receives in retirement (which has been a fundamental principle). Would this backfire by weakening support for Social Security and making people think it's a Ponzi Scheme?

Public Comments

1. Well this proposal removes the notion that social security is a social "insurance" program that you buy in to (even if its a really bad one for your buck). It would then resemble just another welfare type program, where it is simply a vehicle to transfer wealth from the working to the retired, and/ or the rich to the poor. Unfortunately, the system is going to go broke as it stands now. No one is really going to make fundemental changes to it like Bush had proposed back in 2000, because it is such a politically disaterous approach. The second anyone proposes changes, all we hear is a scare tactic scheme to frighten elderly people into voting against it. Some politicians will use this simply for short term political gains, others actually believe in heavy government socialism. So I see this proposal as being one of the first to be tried. It allows politicians to continue promising these benifits that the treasury cant afford, and only raise taxes on "the rich." Therefore the political fallout will bebe relatively low. However, it will only delay the inevatable for a few years, because the future promised liabilities are huge. Our current bdget deficit is a drop int he bucket compared to whats coming. It is estimated along with medicare to be the equivelent of the entire federal budget by somethign arounf 2030, so a lot more would be needed then just readjusting the applied taxable income. But politicians dont care about this fact. The dont care about long term prosperity of the country -- they only care about winning the next election. We will just be all skrewed when the problem blows up in our face in a decade or two when the baby boomers are all retired, and people finally wake up and get out of denial, but by then will be too late to make reforms that fix it, and we all have to suffer. Because elderly vote in higher numer then the young, the "fix" is going to be biased towards higher taxes instead of lower benifits. Anyone whos 35 or younger can rest asured that they will have little or no social security available for them, and they will be paying a tremendous amount of taxes to pay for their parents generation who continued to support the largest pyramid scheam in history, and then dump it on their children. It is only sustainable if the next generation continues to grow faster then the previous, and the baby boombers didnt have enough kids to continue it.