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Adjusting the $200k for inflation, that's around $800k.
If anything, SS recipients should be getting back more than $730k. That's deferred consumption which was recycled through public spending into increased domestic growth. Growth that the vast majority of these workers never got to see, as their salaries fell behind the inflation rate.
But ask the editors of Fortune Magazine what they think of uncapping the Social Security tax, so it applies to people making more than $180k/year. Ask them how they feel about paying for SS directly out of the General Fund, rather than getting a special Poor Tax that can't be exempted through deductions and credits. Ask them how they feel about paying for SS out of an Equities Transaction Tax, such that trillionaires issuing the next round of IPOs take responsibility for the millions of senior citizens who they are brain-fucking with AI slop on a daily basis.
Social Security is the promise this country (kinda-sorta) makes to its elderly. If you worked your whole life, you won't be impoverished the day your employer doesn't consider you a value-add anymore. The taxation scheme for SS is fucked, but only because it taxes labor income rather than labor value. We've seen the gross wealth in this country rise from $2.2T to $167T between 1960 and 2027. And you're telling me we're running out of money to pay our retirees?
Fuck off. Anyone should be able to see through this bullshit.
Exactly. It is obvious that this is trying to lie to you, because of course employees should be entitled to the employer match that employers paid into SS. If SS were a private fund, then those retirement funds would have been earning interest and the payors should be entitled to interest on their savings. “But, the index fund is paying you out more than you put in!!! The stock market will run out of moeny!” No, that is exactly what index funds, and retirement funds, are suppose to do.
I think just like the US Secret Service, Social Security is… uh… not fond of the acronym… ;-)
The most obvious slight of hand here is the suggestion that employer contributions shouldn't count as part of what employees paid in. That is part of their compensation and shouldn't be ignored when suggesting that younger generations are paying for baby boomer's social security.
To me this reads like someone is trying to poison younger people against social security so they won't complain when it is taken away.
The $200,000 cited is combined contributions, meaning it does include what the employer paid in
THEY DIDN'T ACCOUNT INFLATION IN PAYMENTS??
I sort of don’t want to wade into this, but…
I agree with pretty much all of what you said, but they are accounting for inflation.
Edit: Oh, no. My apologies.
The article is kind of bullshit. They jump from saying the value is measured in present values to nominal without actually adjusting their numbers. I’m not a mathamagician, but something is fucky here in a way that extends beyond mathematical errors. They claim a discrepancy (employee + employer contributions), use an edge case to inflate the numbers (going with just employee contributions), then repeatedly mention that higher discrepancy while saying it’s due to both employee and employer contributions. It’s like an AI went off the rails trying to write persuasively, and the “writer” just let it fly anyway. Some basic logic doesn’t seem to work here.
Shit. I read the summary from the OP before I commented. My mistake.
I assumed it was already adjusted since it says "measured in present-value dollars"
(Emphasis added.)
The article already adjusted for inflation. It would be 365% if calculated based on nominal dollars.
The problem isn't individual retirees collecting more than they paid in. The problem is billionaires and hundred-millionaires being exempted from paying into it.