this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
166 points (97.7% liked)

News

35962 readers
3525 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 17 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

It's kind of insane to me that there's an annual cap on social security payments. If your salary is high enough, you stop paying into it partway through the year. That's ass-backwards. You shouldn't pay anything for the first chunk of money, and then pay more as you make more.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago

Yup.

Social security is one of, if not the most popular, government program with Americans.

Looking at Social Security and the constant gaslighting about how it's a "Ponzi scheme" and it's "going to fail at year X" demonstrates not only how out of touch the Epstein class we have for politicians are, but also the extent they and the corporate media is willing to go to give a false impression about things.

It could easily be made solvent with just a few steps, all of them quite popular with the American people.

People already have a shocking lack of saving. We have had the cons trying to destroy Social Security since its inception, and now we get fElon telling people they won't need to save for retirement, FFS:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-retirement-saving-ai-abundance-anthropic-dario-essay-ubi-2026-1

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

If your salary is high enough, you stop paying into it partway through the year. That’s ass-backwards.

It looks ass-backwards when viewed in isolation and today's tax policy. When the cap rule was put in place in 1937, the marginal tax rate was 79% and this would be for income over $5million ($115million in 2026 dollars). The cap was in place because the Social Security benefit doesn't increase above the that income.

We broke the system by removing that large marginal tax, but leaving the Social Security income cap in place.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 2 points 4 hours ago

The cap was in place because the Social Security benefit doesn’t increase above the that income.

I don't think that's necessarily a good reason for the cap to exist. I expect it's a compromise to get rich people and idiots on board.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It's exactly for these kinds of anachronistic things that when I see someone right now agitating to have some kind of age cutoff for people in office, I have a lot of skepticism.

It'd be ironic for government to put a cap into place for age of 65 (say) and then soon after, humans often start having longer and longer healthspans, extending over 100 and possibly beyond.

For that matter, it'd be interesting to see how the Social Security system responds to longer and longer healthspans. I have a feeling that cons would be quite quick to start agitating to raise the retirement age because they always seem very keen on having people working more, even when they don't want to. They also love to take away services and benefits from the average American.

It's easy to see how slow our system responds based on the realities going on around us.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

It’s exactly for these kinds of anachronistic things that when I see someone right now agitating to have some kind of age cutoff for people in office, I have a lot of skepticism.

It’d be ironic for government to put a cap into place for age of 65 (say) and then soon after, humans often start having longer and longer healthspans, extending over 100 and possibly beyond.

I would certainly entertain an age cap on office holders. What we have right now with almost entirely geriatric leaders is the lack of representation of those not in the senior citizen demographic. Its a version of tyranny of the few. This is exacerbated by the voting power being focused in those that don't have the suffer the consequences of their choices, and instead leave those for younger generations.

I'm open to other ideas about how to address this too, but I don't dismiss an age cap on office holders immediately.

For that matter, it’d be interesting to see how the Social Security system responds to longer and longer healthspans.

You don't have to wonder. We've experienced this already in the life of Social Security. The original blueprint wasn't designed to have a large retired population. You were supposed to die before reaching retirement. Social Security was to support the aging survivors that didn't die yet to keep them out of abject poverty.

Retirement age increase is only one of three or four big levers on how to alter how Social Security operates and is maintainable.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

hey, when you study history you aren't supposed to study economic and tax systems knock it off

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world -2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

If you were rich you would feel the opposite. You'd feel that you don't/won't need social security so you shouldn't have to pay for a service you won't use.

[–] phughes@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not sure about the rich, but most people don't like being surrounded by homeless and starving people. They also don't like seeing their extended family homeless and starving after working their whole lives.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

They also absolutely do not want to pay for social services that would minimize/mitigate those people being seen.

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

And those special snowflakes should be told: with great power, comes great responsibility.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

rich people don't think they have any power. they think they are 'worse off' than middle and lower classes because everyone is trying to steal their money.