EASY SOCIAL SECURITY FIX...AND A BIT MORE ABOUT DEMOCRATS

It's painful to have to say this again. And again. And again. To fix Social Security, you simply have to make the system fair. How? Raise the limit on compensation (not just salaries) to which FICA applies. Just that. All it takes.

Why not? What's so difficult? Because it's a tax increase, that's why. And tax increases are still toxic after all these years. I blame JFK, after Trump the richest man ever elected to the Presidency, who cut taxes on millionaires and called it an economic stimulus. We've been dealing with that fallacious reasoning ever since. Yes, it was JFK who popularized the phrase that 'a rising tide lifts all boats' from the Presidential bully pulpit. Not Reagan. JFK. It's one of the reasons that I never bought into Camelot, but that's a post for another day.

Currently, a wage earner pays 6.2% of their wages into the Social Security Trust Fund up to a wage base limit of $184,500. An upper limit, but no floor. Wage earners are taxed on the first dollar earned. No exemption or standard deduction. Let's look at what that means.

A janitor on the factory floor has an annual salary of $50,000. They pay $3,100 for Social Security. That's 6.2% of income.

The factory's general manager has an annual income of $250,000. They pay $11,439. That's 4.6% of income because they're only taxed on the first $184,500.

The CEO of the company that owns the factory has an annual income of $3,000,000. They pay that same $11,439. And that's less than half of 1% of income.

So, raise the ceiling. Simple as that. Adjust the tax rate as needed to monetize the fund. And, since you know that the wealthiest wage earners will try to avoid paying a tax that they can well afford to pay, define compensation broadly enough to rope in the schemers and the scammers like Elon and Jeff and Mark and Donnie.

It's so damn simple. They'll never do it.

Instead, they will propose raising the retirement age, cutting benefits, and the authorizing the smallest tax increase that they think that they can get away with. Damn near the exact opposite of what should be done. Burns my butt!

EDIT: Sen. Warren has just introduced a bill to lift the cap on salaries subject to FICA. Of course, the headlines call it a major tax increase. We'll see how it shakes out.

MORE ABOUT DEMOCRATS: The implosion of the Democratic Party begins. AOC tells us that she doesn't support Schumer for Senate Majority Leader. There was a time when the Houses of Congress refrained from mixing into each others' business. For a reason. Respect for boundaries. And Senator Van Hollen demonstrates his total deafness by declaring that the electorate voted for change, but associating that desire for change to mean a desire for progressive policies and not a fervent disgust with Trump and MAGA, two entirely different motivations. Leaving the hard work to Schumer for fighting the hard fight all these years in the minority, and then rewarding him by kicking him out the door, is the antithesis of my idea of uniting my party to do the work of governance.

I am not encouraged.