Gonna guess that 98% do not, 1% do, 1% don’t know.
lol this is me laugh out loud
Sorry. Thread hijack.
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It would highlight the need to tax more than simple wages. The current system gives tax preference to capital - dividend exclusions, long term cap gains rates, etc. but today’s GDP is heavily weighted towards finance. Those increases in wealth are needed to provide for the society’s entire population.
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Boomers weren’t concentrated in FL in 2001-2015 (the time frame for that opinion piece).
And, again, there is no evidence that the larger cohorts that weren’t boomers were voting any differently during that time period.
Not in the time I’m willing to devote.
But you can. Invent a baby boomer. Say he was born in 1950. Got a McJob at age 16 working 15 hours a week at minimum wage. Raises 1% above inflation until he graduates from college at age 22. Then he’s making median income when he graduates from college. (He’s below median age but above median educated… seems close enough.) Raises 1% above inflation until age 66 when he retires.
How much Social Security tax did he pay? Don’t forget to include what his employer paid.
What’s his benefit? What’s his life expectancy at age 66?
That doesn’t even count the value of the disability insurance and the Survivor benefits. So you should probably count less than 100% of taxes. But even if you ignore that piece…
And it’s all because you posted a fake quote!!
Shame!!! SHAME!!!
(poke)
Political truths that are not funny. The inadequacy of the FICA taxes relative to benefits is a political truth and it’s not funny. 
You were so confident that I thought you had already done the calculation. What interest rate do you think is appropriate for the accumulation?
Why did you pick someone born in 1950 instead of someone born in 1960?
Of. Course. It’s intergenerational.
How about this. I would always max out my FICA in March. March was annual bonus time. My take home pay went up every April. Meanwhile the guy that repaired my car, the plumber, the lady at the local plant nursery,…they paid all year.
That’s the scam
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This is fair enough. Capital is much more mobile these days so you might not be able to capture as much revenue as you might like though vs earned worker income.
We don’t have caps in the UK in terms of FICA (NI in the UK). You pay on your entire earned income.
It wasn’t always like that. They got rid of the cap…to kick the can down the road about 20 years ago.
And we are now back to square one.
Just putting it out there because it won’t solve the problems in the US, it will just buy you more time.
Small business income is taxed too.
If you have a small business that you’ve set up as an S-Corp and in 2023 you made, say, $500,000 as a consultant… you are supposed to pay yourself a reasonable salary. Now maybe you pay yourself a $120,000 salary and pay the other $380,000 out as dividends instead of paying the full $500,000 as salary.
Eh… your actual Social Security tax is $14,880 and you “should have” paid $18,228 and you’re also going to get a slightly lower benefit. That’s not costing much. It’s costing a little, but how many people are actually doing that?
It hurts Medicare more, I don’t deny that.
But the far bigger problem is that the tax on the $120,000 of income is insufficient to fund the benefit on $120,000 of income.
I very much doubt that it’s having a material impact on fertility.
Other nations with different retirement schemes have seen a similar drop in fertility.
No doubt. But irrelevant. It is not a savings account. It’s a program to provide income to those outside the working ages. It doesn’t balance, and does not need to. This has been true of mankind since your ancient ancestors were making charcoal drawings of elks in their caves. Welcome to the human race.
The U.S. is doing that, and by design it’s increasing every year … in that the dollar amount that is left untaxed is NOT pegged to inflation.
Whether you consider those tax dollars to be taxes paid into Social Security is another matter.
High taxes and housing costs on younger generations have a pronounced effect on family formation.
Its happening in all western countries because of demographics and reduced housing supply (which is also being strangled by NIMBY boomers).
Its an economic disaster of epic proportions.
Correct. Medicare is the fault of the “greatest generation” and Social Security was their parents.
I have, actually… I’m just not confident in my ability to find it.
Creating these programs was not necessarily a mistake. It was the way they were financed historically that is the problem. Pay as you go only works well with similar-sized generations.
This is sadly true. I suggest a quick glance at the Wiki page on replacement rates. I’ll add the link in a bit.
You can hover over the country name and see the current demographic shape. This is the future.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
One of the weirdest is Russia. They got real problems. Turns out that Stalin “starve the Ukraine” was about 25 before WW2. Twice in succession, they lost huge percentages of the exact demographic. Very few babies very 25 or 30 years. It’s inevitable now. They need the Ukraine to sustain their economy.