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Inequality is little more than robbery.
More money going to the wealthy means that less money goes to payroll taxes.
Social Security, the federal anti-poverty program inaugurated during the Great Depression, is funded in two, and only two, ways: a payroll tax and a tax on benefits themselves. The first, and biggest, way — and it accounts for 96% of the funds — is a payroll tax; anybody who receives a paycheck between $1 and about $132,000 dollars is taxed and the money sent to the Social Security trust fund to be invested in US Treasuries and later payed out to recipients of Social Security. The second way in which Social Security is funded is in taxing benefits themselves, which are then re-invested in the Social Security Trust Fund: that is to say, the 69-year-old widow who receives a check from the Social Security administration has taxes deducted from that check and those funds deducted are put back in the Social Security trust fund from which they were deducted.
That’s it. Those are the ways in which Social Security is funded. It is completely and comprehensively a tax on those who are receiving a paycheck. Those who make their wealth by investments only contribute to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in second order fashion: by how many payroll jobs they create.
Of course, we are told — again and again — how the Social Security trust fund is going…
