I haven’t heard the old talk of converting social security into a privatized system where we’d all be invested in the stock market (and middlemen would skim off huge profits). Imagine if benefits were riding the tariff roller coaster.
"If, on top of that, they need to shore up Social Security, they could raise taxes even further, perhaps to a level unprecedented in post-war years."
You appear to be referring to post WWII which ended in 1945. The top marginal income tax rate was 91% in 1963. Are you really implying that above 91% is needed? Are you referring to the post Cold War era? While we could use regular tax revenues to shore up Social Security, FDR designed it with.a dedicated tax so: "no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program."
Social Security taxes haven't been raised since Reagan. Reagan said that wages from work and income from investment should be the same. Reagan accomplished that by leading Congress to change the tax code so that the top marginal rates for wages and investment matched at 28%. If he had added payroll taxes for investment income, the pending funding shortfall for Social Security and Medicare wouldn't be an issue today, and perhaps ever. If we fully implemented Reagan's idea today by eliminating the cap for wages subject to the payroll tax and added the standard payroll taxes for wages to investment income, our worries about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare funding would vanish. (Reagan fought hard against Medicare and warned that we would turn into a Socialist country if it was implemented. Obama got Congress to add a Medicare tax on investment income for high earners.)
Trump has pledged both to not cut Social Security and not raise taxes. That is functionally impossible unless we have a huge perpetual surge in immigration of younger workers, or skyrocketing birth rates, or a catastrophic killing off of our older population, or perhaps Trump will just deport anyone of color or nationality he doesn't like after they reach retirement age and change the rules so foreigners can't collect the Social Security they've earned?
I haven’t heard the old talk of converting social security into a privatized system where we’d all be invested in the stock market (and middlemen would skim off huge profits). Imagine if benefits were riding the tariff roller coaster.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/12/trump-immigrants-dead-social-security/
You wrote:
"If, on top of that, they need to shore up Social Security, they could raise taxes even further, perhaps to a level unprecedented in post-war years."
You appear to be referring to post WWII which ended in 1945. The top marginal income tax rate was 91% in 1963. Are you really implying that above 91% is needed? Are you referring to the post Cold War era? While we could use regular tax revenues to shore up Social Security, FDR designed it with.a dedicated tax so: "no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program."
Social Security taxes haven't been raised since Reagan. Reagan said that wages from work and income from investment should be the same. Reagan accomplished that by leading Congress to change the tax code so that the top marginal rates for wages and investment matched at 28%. If he had added payroll taxes for investment income, the pending funding shortfall for Social Security and Medicare wouldn't be an issue today, and perhaps ever. If we fully implemented Reagan's idea today by eliminating the cap for wages subject to the payroll tax and added the standard payroll taxes for wages to investment income, our worries about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare funding would vanish. (Reagan fought hard against Medicare and warned that we would turn into a Socialist country if it was implemented. Obama got Congress to add a Medicare tax on investment income for high earners.)
Trump has pledged both to not cut Social Security and not raise taxes. That is functionally impossible unless we have a huge perpetual surge in immigration of younger workers, or skyrocketing birth rates, or a catastrophic killing off of our older population, or perhaps Trump will just deport anyone of color or nationality he doesn't like after they reach retirement age and change the rules so foreigners can't collect the Social Security they've earned?