Social Security is in no "crisis", it's actually solvent until around *2037* where the payroll tax base will be sufficient enough to cover only about 75% of promised benefits until *2085*. Since the 1980s when the Great Income Divide began between the super wealthy and the rest of us, Middle class incomes have also stagnated for the past thirty years. Considering the immense concentration of "trickle down" wealth over the same time period (62% of income gains earned from 2002-2007 went to the top 1% _alone_), the payroll tax capped at around 110k/year doesn't touch the immense gains that the richest in the country reaped, and along with the aforementioned stagnant Middle class gains, a future budget shortfall is created from the lost revenue. The bipartisan effort to "reform" Social Security with cuts is logically absurd: "we are facing shortfalls in the future, so to prevent them we must achieve the equivalent by making cuts *now*."
Slashdot Mirror
Social Security is in no "crisis", it's actually solvent until around *2037* where the payroll tax base will be sufficient enough to cover only about 75% of promised benefits until *2085*. Since the 1980s when the Great Income Divide began between the super wealthy and the rest of us, Middle class incomes have also stagnated for the past thirty years. Considering the immense concentration of "trickle down" wealth over the same time period (62% of income gains earned from 2002-2007 went to the top 1% _alone_), the payroll tax capped at around 110k/year doesn't touch the immense gains that the richest in the country reaped, and along with the aforementioned stagnant Middle class gains, a future budget shortfall is created from the lost revenue. The bipartisan effort to "reform" Social Security with cuts is logically absurd: "we are facing shortfalls in the future, so to prevent them we must achieve the equivalent by making cuts *now*."
http://www.salon.com/2011/07/08/social_security_deficit/singleton/