Usually it works the other way around, where people don’t start paying a tax until their salary reaches a certain level. Somehow they’ve inverted this to favor the rich? Why aren’t people rioting?
Because people have finite time. Most of it goes to work, some of it goes to sleep, the remaining time gets spent on not looking like a hoarding caveman (or if you have kids, kids). So if you get an hour of actual free time in your day you probably have it pretty good. Now, do you want to spend that hour on politics or do you want to chill from your day?
Keeping up with politics is a luxury most people don’t have.
Right, democratic agency requires not only rights, but the ability to actualize those rights. Just like elections are meaningless if you don’t have the freedom to engage with and debate political questions, so are those freedoms meaningless if you don’t have the time, energy or capacity to reduce those freedoms to practice.
Or don’t want, I stress at my job, stress about finances, stress about family, last thing I’m stressing over is what’s going on in the world. I’ll watch my very local news to see what the dog of the week is but that’s about it
Slow boil
While someone making millions should be taxed at 100% for SS like most of us, think about how much would be in the fund if capital gains were taxed that way as well.
Enough to lower the social security age from 67 years to 6-7 weeks gestational age. Remove the cap, include cap gains, and UBI becomes a thing.
Well, no.
The thing is, if everyone’s retired and nobody’s working, there’s no productivity, meaning there’s either no money, or money is meaningless
It could certainly be reduced by a pretty good number of years though. Enough that you start your retirement when your body and your mind is still “all there”, you get to enjoy it.
Millions of people work for free every day, we call them volunteers. Many of our institutions including hospitals, parks, schools, sports leagues, museums, food banks, community theaters and zoos depend on volunteer staffing to run their programs.
When I hear someone say no one will work if they aren’t paid, I hear projection.
Nobody should work for free, that’s exploitation. UBI should provide basic assistance, and then people should be free to do what they want with their free time. Many, like myself, would pursue artistic goals, but many would still want to work and earn more money, and that’s okay, too. Even artists may want to sell their work.
The point is that nobody HAS to work for money, but they can if they want to. That’s real freedom.
OK but a decent minority of people would complain, no?.. “If someone had to spend over a decade of their life in college and grad school to be a doctor or something, and Joe just started driving a forklift out of high school, should they both be working for free?”
As in volunteer work is typically general labor, while many things require very deep, specialized knowledge obtained thru years of schooling. Doctors, engineers, economists, etc. Im sure some people would still pursue those things out of sheer love. But I imagine for some people the potential of earning more is that extra motivation that pushes them down that path.
The “volunteer” comment was rebutting the idea that there would be no productivity in a society where money is irrelevant. UBI is not a replacement of compensation for work.
Presently, the first ~$16,000 you earn through labor are not gainful. That income provides your basic subsistence. You pretty much have to spend that much just to keep yourself alive in our economy. The remainder of your income is consider “gainful”.
UBI doesn’t replace compensation for labor. UBI provides that subsistence income. UBI means that every dollar you earn through your own labor is gainful. Your subsistence needs for the week are met before you leave for work on Monday.
Doctors Without Borders, legal aid society, Plenty of credentialed professionals volunteer their services as well.
I can’t help wondering how Doctors Without Borders survive while spending all their time working for $0.
That’s why I said “typically”. You didn’t address the issue. 0.1% of doctors volunteer for doctors without borders. People will take issue with one person needing 12 years of schooling or having to work in awful conditions, that will be making the same as someone driving a forklift around a warehouse all day. Saving someone’s life as an ER surgeon is not the same as being a delivery driver. How will you address the discrepancy?
Do you not see the issue people will have with that kind of societal system?? Or are you just ignoring it on purpose because there is no good answer?
People will take issue with one person needing 12 years of schooling or having to work in awful conditions, that will be making the same as someone driving a forklift around a warehouse all day.
That statement does not describe UBI. The whole “volunteer” line of discussion is absurd.
The doctor and the forklift driver will receive the same UBI check, as will an unemployed person. The doctor will also receive a paycheck from an employer for their labor. The forklift driver will also receive a paycheck from an employer for their labor. The unemployed person will only receive the UBI check.
Imagine the country as a publicly traded company, where each citizen holds exactly one share of common stock. Imagine that company pays a monthly dividend on that share. That “Citizenship Dividend” is UBI. Just because you are a “shareholder” doesn’t mean that check is your sole source of income. That check is not the compensation for your labor. That check is the compensation for the government’s use of your political authority in a democratic system.
That check should be for an amount that provides “subsistence” income to the general public. Basic subsistence. Not gainful earnings. Gainful earnings come from compensation for labor. The forklift driver will be earning gainfully as soon as he clocks in on Monday morning, not Thursday afternoon, after having worked most of the work for subsistence. The doctor will be earning gainfully when she clocks in Monday morning, not Monday afternoon, after having worked the morning for subsistence.
I did address, you then pulled .01 out of your ass, it stinks.
Only because their basic needs are already met by the income of, you know, their regular professional job.
The thing is, if everyone’s retired and nobody’s working,
Where do you get the idea that nobody is working with UBI?
UBI isn’t supposed to be your entire, or even your primary source of income. The most basic concept of UBI is supposed to be enough for a roof over your head, rice and beans in your belly, and that’s about it. It’s supposed to cover the absolute essentials, not your entire lifestyle. It is supposed to remove the desperation of subsistence.
When a man is drowning, he’ll do anything to survive. When his lungs start filling with water, he’ll drown his wife and kids just for one more breath of air. When a worker is desperate, they will take any work on any exploitative terms that are offered, just to put a meal in their belly. That desperation drags down wages and conditions for everyone. The fundamental purpose of UBI is to ensure that even the most desperate among us aren’t forced into exploitation, and in doing so, drag everyone down with them.
There is no shortage of labor. We have a massive excess of labor. We have so much labor available that even though everybody currently needs to work, wages are so low that nobody has any money to spend on anything but essentials. The economy is stagnating because everybody is working, but nobody is buying anything.
UBI is a long-term solution to this untenable situation.
When people are retired, as per your comment to which he replied, they are not going to work much. You can not call it retirement when people work (roughly) as much as they do now.
When people are retired, as per your comment to which he replied, they are not going to work much. You can not call it retirement when people work (roughly) as much as they do now.
Here is the full text of the comment you are referring to:
Enough to lower the social security age from 67 years to 6-7 weeks gestational age. Remove the cap, include cap gains, and UBI becomes a thing.
“Retired” was not “per [my] comment” but from the “comment to which he replied”. I didn’t use the word; the other person did.
I referred to the new, social security system as “UBI”. Universal Basic Income. Also known as a “Citizenship Dividend”. When we remove the caps, and tax capital gains as well as income, the “social security age” is no longer the age at which someone retires, but the age at which they initially join society.
Ah sorry mate.
Per Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget scrapping the cap would postpone the trust running out to either 2054 or 2058 depending on whether or not those who pay the now higher taxes would also receive correspondingly higher benefits or if the benefits remain capped. So an extra 20 or 24 years since presently the trust is slated to run out in 2034. When the trust runs out, benefits are going to be cut to match the money coming in which would mean about ~20% reduction to benefits.
Good start and punts the issue off for another generation, but it doesn’t quite save social security all the way.
Sure, and also social security is the opposite of need based as well. So those people who paid tax on a tiny fraction of their income also see the largest checks after retirement age when they need zero percent of the money. Meanwhile, people who worked their whole lives and paid social security tax on 100% of their earnings don’t get enough back from social security to be able to continue to live.
The people making more than 184k do not want to be a part of our society, it seems.
That’s fine. The tree of liberty could use some refreshing.
Yes. The tax should be progressive where the first $x are not taxed, and the rate ramps up as income increases.
It’s ass-backwards like this.
Fuck this cunt she isn’t wrong but she rat fuck Sanders for her own ambitions so she can fuck off.
The faces around her are so expressive. I wish i had the energy to give them thought bubbles
The one on the right looks like the real version of the gru meme
Framing social security this way is dangerously misleading. Yes, the amount you put in is capped, but the amount that you get to take out when you are old is also capped. I fully believe that taxes need to be progressive, but social security is not a tax, it’s a retirement fund.
Social Security is financed through a dedicated payroll tax.
It is a tax. That is a fact. That sentence is literally from the social security website https://www.ssa.gov/news/en/press/how-is-social-security-financed.html as of August 15th 2026.
Unlike most other taxes, you only benefit from social security if you’ve paid into it. And the amount you receive is proportional to the amount you put in. Practically, it’s far closer to a retirement account or pension than a tax.
So, yes, let’s move the goal posts! I’m all for that.
Social security is not a retirement fund.
If I have an actual retirement fund that I contribute to every month for my entire adult life, and I die the year before I retire, the entirety of that retirement fund goes into my estate. It is ultimately bequeathed to my legal heirs.
If I die a year before collecting social security, my heirs will get nothing of what I paid in. The government keeps that money, and pays it out to other social security beneficiaries. (I am not married, and my children are over 19 and not disabled.)
A pension, maybe, but Social Security is in no way comparable to a retirement fund.
A pension, maybe, but Social Security is in no way comparable to a retirement fund.
By that logic, a pension is in no way comparable to a retirement fund, which is a rediculous statement that no one would agree with.
A pension also means different things depending on where you are.
In my country, your pension comes from multiple parts. The national pension has a “citizens pension” portion that everyone gets, then the next bit depends on how many years you worked. Then there’s something that’s sort of our equivalent of a 401k and that’s called a voluntary pension fund.
I’d never heard of a pension being paid by your employer until I started hanging out online. Seemed ridiculous, as they could just go out of business or something.
A pension is not a retirement fund either, from the perspective of the worker and the worker’s family. A pension is paid to the worker for the remainder of the worker’s life, regardless of the amount the worker has paid into the fund. If they put in 20 years worth of payments and live 40 years, they collect 40 years of payments. If they live only two months, they only collect two months of payments.
I would agree that social security is comparable to a pension or retirement insurance, in that the payout is not necessarily commensurate with the pay-in.
A 401k is a fund. If the worker puts in 20 years of payments, and only lives two months, the worker’s heirs receive 19 years and 10 months worth of payments.
401ks directly replaced pensions for most Americans. It’s disingenuous to claim they’re “in no way comparable.”
Yeah? Cars replaced horses for most Americans.
The mechanism of operation is so different that they cannot be considered the same thing. Even though they are used for similar purposes, they are not reasonably comparable.
Umm… No? The monthly amount you receive is based on your earnings, yes. However (And please correct me if I’m wrong) the benefit continues until the death of you and any qualified person (spouse, ex spouse, minor children, disabled children, disabled parent) who survives you. You and/or they could be collecting that benefit on your 150th birthday.
Alternatively, if you die before retiring, without qualified survivors, social security pays nothing to you or your estate.
It’s not a “fund”. That is a pension, or a retirement insurance program. The taxes that pay for it are premium payments.
Social security is a social safety net, not a personal retirement fund. That’s what my pension, 401k, etc are for.
When social security was instituted with the retirement age of 65, the average life expectancy was 63. It was only “retirement” income for people who had lived longer than expected and would otherwise be living on the street - especially since so many had lost their savings in the Depression - but retirement savings wasn’t its primary purpose.
But people started living longer and stopped saving (either because they knew they had social security coming, or because we suck at planning ahead, or because corporate America sucks donkey balls and people are always living paycheck-to-paycheck) and it became something it wasn’t meant to be.
It should provide income for retirees who have no other income, but like other social programs it should be based on need. Super rich people should pay into jlot just like everyone else, but they shouldn’t be able to collect it because they don’t need it and it’s not intended to take the place of personal savings.
I disagree with the “based on need”. That’s “means testing”, and converts the program from a simple social entitlement program into charity. It immediately builds in resentment for “successful” people being compelled to support “failures”. Means Testing is the underlying problem that creates and systematically oppresses the poverty class.
Social security should be provided equally to every person of “retirement age”, regardless of need or whether they have actually retired or are continuing to work.
Social Security should be moving toward becoming Universal Basic Income.
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Imagine, for a moment, what a tiny, insignificant fraction of Elon Musk’s income must go to Social Security. And yet the cunt goes on JRE to say it should be abolished.
Billionaires shouldn’t be respected as human beings.
So? Your ruling oligarchs don’t care and they tell most peons how to vote. Now get back to slaving away.
Median attorney income in the US is $150k, Liz.
She didn’t say “if you’re a median attorney”, she said “if you’re a lawyer raking in millions,” and she was correct.
She went out of her way to pick a profession that doesn’t fit with the second clause of her sentence.
Code monkeys with equity should get the shot taxed out of them too. Skilled laborers who use their sole proprietorship contracting company to absorb personal expenses should get taxed to death. Nurse anesthetists should be paying a massive tax on their hundreds of thousands of dollars of income.
It was a weird shot at a group of people who are largely populated by workers making less than six figures.
What point are you even trying to make? That she shouldn’t have become a lawyer or a politician if she believes people making millions should pay a fair portion into social security?
Her statement doesn’t exclude other career fields making seven figures or more than the social security cap. She picked one example of someone who might make that much. And some lawyers do make millions. If a lawyer makes less than six figures, then her statement doesn’t apply to them because they’re already paying into social security.
You’re picking apart what she’s saying and turning it into disingenuous interpretations by adding layers of meaning that she never implied. It’s uncharitable and in bad faith.
It wasn’t a shot at “lawyers, all of them, and no one else.” It was a shot at “people making millions in income who don’t pay their fair share into social security.”
And if you couldn’t figure that out from the context provided, then you need to work on your media literacy.
wow
that’s a lot of text. Did you use an LLM to write it or are you just unreasonably upset?
No. Are you so incapable of reading/writing in paragraphs that you believe no one else can do so without using an LLM?
Tagged as “illiterate but confident”.
If, as you say, the median income of lawyers in $150k, then it’s safe to assume more than half are making over 6 figures. According to this link I found in a quick search, about 10% of lawyers make less than 100k. Can that be said of the other professions you mentioned?
This ignores the fact she is advocating getting rid of the cap for everyone, not just lawyers.
The cutoff for having to pay social security for 2026 is $184500. That’s not that much more than the average.
Social Security is forced retirement savings. There’s a cap on what you pay in because there’s a cap on what you pay out.
There is a cap because republicans want to kill social security. It’s the same bullshit they are doing to the postal service.
It’s not savings of any sort. The remainder of your savings goes to your heirs when you die. If you don’t have a spouse, or minor children or disabled adult children, and you die before collecting all of your contributions, you and your estate forfeit 100% of the remainder.
If you make more than $184k you pay zero dollars into social security. The other part is you aren’t getting any benefits.
They pay social security taxes on the first 184k/yr. They do not pay taxes on that part of their income above 184k.
They do, actually, receive social security checks, regardless of income or need, beginning at (or possibly before) the age of 70. Since they’ve been paying in the maximum, they are receiving the maximum benefit, $4152 per month, rather than the median benefit of $2083 per month.
You are wrong on both counts.
Further, there is a very strong correlation between income level and life expectancy. The median worker is typically collecting that $2083/mo benefit until age 76. But the median life expectancy of the wealthy is 9 years longer: They are typically collecting that $4152 benefit until age 85.
The people you are talking about are the ones posing the very highest drain on the system.
Absolutely true. Also just like, fundamentally bullshit, and perfectly reasonable to consider expansion of the cap.
Those currently over the cap reap outsized benefits borne from the labor of those who don’t make the cap. That’s how they fucking made it, above the cap.
There is no moral turpitude in taxing them to fund a social net they won’t directly use, because they’ve been indirectly benefitting from it all along.
The piddling argument I can already hear you making, gets even more ridiculous when you scale past the professionally licensed professions and get into pure capitalists.
This is a compromise being offered, in lieu of the buffet table, and of course they’re gonna be too fucking stupid to accept it because the morons forgot the bread part and all they got left is their shitty circus.
I pay taxes knowing that I won’t benefit directly from many of my country’s programs. New train lines? I drive. Free health care? I’m healthy. Free school lunches? I’m not a child and I don’t have children. Social housing? I own my apartment.
But the thing is, I benefit directly. It means that everyone around me has a reasonable standard of living. I’m surrounded by healthy, literate people with clean clothes and full bellies. That pushes my standard of living up. I’m happy to be taxed.
It also means when you do need them they are available. Car broke down, take the train. Get sick, hospitals aren’t backed up with people that don’t have preventative care and are more acutely sick than should be. This statement also includes homeless that get sick from living on the street and fill EDs.
Also new train line means less traffic and public healthcare means less spread of disease
What piddling argument do you think I’m making when I state facts about the tax code.
Can already hear you making
This implies preemptive assumptions on my part. I could be wrong. You stated facts, true.
If that is the extent of your stance on the topic, then that portion of my comment is irrelevant, and needlessly combative.
Not that I’m apologizing for it, these are not the times for that.
Well that is wrong on both accounts, unless you assume SS will be bankrupt before you can collect anything.
Downvote reality all you like, it won’t make y’all any more correct. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040es.pdf
Believe it or not it is true.
Dude I’m a milennial, I already accepted the fact that I’m not getting any benefits.
I’m 41 now. I have a funny feeling that in the next 25 years, the retirement age will go up, and the number of people living long enough to collect it will go down.
All my life, I was told SS wouldn’t be there for me, and now I’m collecting it.
If you tell DC that you expect it to go away, and you’ll accept that outcome, no matter how much you hate it, that’s exactly what they’ll do.
Stop surrendering in advance, and wasting your time posting such pathetic messages. Use your posts to warn them that they are being watched and JUDGED, by the people who have that right. They need to be afraid of us at all times.
It’s not sustainable. Our generation isn’t having kids, hell we aren’t even having houses.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up wasting a good chunk of 18-25 year olds between now and then, too.
There will not be enough workers to support us in old age.
I honestly do not see any way for SS to last another 25 years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if an absurdly high percentage of Beta Babies (zoomers kids) are unintended. At least in America. So many of my generation have completely given up hope in the future of this country and western society as a whole. The real reason Republicans are going so hard on abortion again…nobody is having babies on purpose.
We’re all just patiently waiting for our parents to fucking die so we can turn this around. But it’s still gonna be like trying to swerve the Titanic.
And as a generation we are getting fucked when our parents die, because they all fell for reverse mortgages and had to put all their savings towards end of life care, so nobody can even inherit shit. All going to the banks and the corrupt as hell insurance and medical industries.
Mate, I hear ya. Everything you said has many kernels of truth in it, but it doesn’t invalidate what the commenter you’re replying to, is trying to tell you.
There will not be enough workers to support us in old age.
This is precisely, why it’s important to badger and force representatives into the exact same discussion about changes to the bill, as the OOP’s shared article touches upon.
You first raise the cap, so the millionaires who are temporarily embarrassed billionaires pay their fair share, and once those loud mother fuckers get used to it, they’re now on your side to keep pushing it up until it hits the owner class.
Productivity gains ain’t decreasing, and the automation that the labor class toiled to make a reality for these fuckheads, shouldn’t have all of its production gain remain as profit for the owners
we also have ton of old people that still need the young paying into the tax scheme. there already parents moving back with thier children to save money, and vice versa.
Yep. Same boat.
Anybody making more than the cap still pays the tax. The cap just means as far as social security is concerned, you only are taxed and provided benefits as though you earned $184k.
Go through the irs form here, page 9. Self employed folks making more than the max put in 0 for SS. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040es.pdf
That form does not calculate social security tax. It calculates an estimated self employment tax. None of the numbers on that page are the amount of tax owed in social security. Lines 5-9 are calculating how much additional tax you can deduct because you are paying social security tax on the first 184.5K of your income. When your income exceeds 184.5k, you are not paying additional social security tax, so you are not entitled to a greater deduction against your self-employment tax.
That’s the instructions for the 1040#es a voluntary form where you estimate you taxes you will owe and make quarterly payments. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040sse.pdf look at line 8a of this form.
Yep. It also shows if you are making above the SS limit then people don’t have to contribute to SS.
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The qualifier you put under here, which is not in your original comment, is if you’re self-employed. What if you aren’t? (Let’s ignore the question of if you should be at that income.)
It is a qualifier. The tax code doesn’t exactly make sense but I’d expect if self-employed doesn’t have to contribute why would an employee. Self employed people have to pay both the employer and employee portion, while employees only pay to employee part.
Okay, so you’re talking about something where you have the bare minimum of knowledge. That’s cool, this is the internet after all. Not being an American, I haven’t spent a lot of time reading their tax laws or forms. I dont know if that applies to you. But I try to be more informed if I’m going to argue on the internet, and it appears SS is a marginal tax just like many others. In this case, it’s a flat tax up to $184.5k this year, and 0 for income above that amount. So your initial point was also wrong.
I have more than the bare amount of knowledge. I correctly conveyed actual tax code for the us. My initial point was not wrong in the slightest and I linked to actual irs tax forms to prove it. You are misinformed and shouldn’t try correcting people on items you clearly don’t understand.
You said if you made over $184k you would pay $0 into SS. In fact you would pay over $20k. How is that correct?
