Social Security: Voters prefer higher taxes over benefit cuts

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Social Security is in crisis, most Americans are worried about it, and they are surprisingly comfortable with the idea of paying higher taxes to fix it.

These are the main takeaways from a new poll just conducted on behalf of the Nationwide Retirement Institute, and if they say anything about the forthcoming election they must favor presumptive nominee Kamala Harris and the Democrats, who do not want to cut taxes, more than Donald Trump and the Republicans, who do.

Some 72% of Americans say they are worried about Social Security running out of funding in their lifetimes, and 79% say they think the program needs to change, the poll reports. Those numbers are highest for millennials and Generation X — those now in their prime earnings years— between their late 20s and late 50s.

Nearly four-fifths of both generations are worried about Social Security, and more than a third of them strongly agree that the Social Security system “needs to change.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/social-security-crisis-voters-prefer-higher-taxes-over-benefit-cuts/ar-BB1r6fv6

[displacedvermoter]

1. Raise the cutoff, or do away with it entirely

Make everyone pay Social Security tax on their entire salary.
Easy and fair.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Yes.

[Shermann]

3. Biden couldn't simply raise the cutoff due to a campaign promise

That gave rise to the donut hole idea which was a bit of a hack and didn't move forward.

A Harris administration should have more latitude to just raise it.

[displacedvermoter]

5. No

It will require a fairly resounding Democratic win, in November, Kamala winning and control of both houses.

But a lot of "fiscally moderate/conservative" Dems would need to be herded.

[orthoclad]

4. Rec

[Igel]

6. That's in accord with the most commonly floated plans.

Outside of DU.

Raise the tax on contributors and their employers, probably a 50-50% split.

Most don't include raising the income cut-off, at least not much, since the project's consistently tied retirement benefits to taxed earned income and that would sever that connection with close to 90 years' precedent (for those who like to respect precedent).

Had this happened a decade or two back then it could have been a small increase, because the shortfall's going to be relatively short-lived. When the pig that is the Boomers and those born in the years immediately after the Boomer cutoff start dying off the short-fall will ease due to mostly natural causes. (I'm of age I could sign up for it but need 1 more year to get to a decent possible DCP retirement plan point and another year after that, at least, to make up for the effective reduction in benefits due to the last few years' inflation. The reitirement's structured as an annuity--great with low inflation, but let it ramp up to 5% and it's suddenly a benefits cut of 5% per year, compounded daily.)

Now that we've waited until close to the deadline for taking action the tax increase would have to be higher. Politicians avoided the lesser political pain of raising taxes a little years ago for the greater political pain of raising taxes a much larger amount Real Soon Now.

[valleyrogue]

7. It isn't in "crisis."

Any reporter who still touts that Cato Institute/Concord Coalition bullshit line is not credible.

[pansypoo53219]

8. just eraase the fucking cap.