A Fair Deal for Social Security
Social Security was never a piggy bank — it is pay-as-you-go, today's workers protecting today's seniors. Scrap the payroll-tax income cap so the wealthy pay in on every dollar, closing most of the long-range shortfall, and fix the real problem — an upside-down age pyramid — by resourcing families and welcoming intelligent immigration.
It was never a piggy bank
Social Security is pay-as-you-go. It was never pre-funded, and it was never meant to run a profit — today’s workers protect today’s seniors, as every working generation has done for the one before it. Judging it like an investment account misunderstands the promise: it is an intergenerational compact, not a 401(k), and asking why it doesn’t turn a surplus is asking the wrong question.
Scrap the cap
Today, wages above a cap (about $184,500 in 2026) pay nothing more into Social Security — so a nurse pays the full rate on every dollar she earns while a CEO stops paying in by February. We scrap the cap and let high earners pay in on all their wages, so everyone pays their fair share. On its own that closes most of the program’s long-range shortfall and pushes the trust fund’s exhaustion out by roughly two decades — the single biggest, simplest step toward lasting solvency there is.
Fix the pyramid
But cap or no cap, the deeper problem is demographic: too few workers coming up behind too many retirees — an upside-down pyramid. No payroll formula closes that gap by itself. So we fix it at the root: resource families so that people who want children can afford to raise them, and welcome intelligent, orderly immigration to keep the working generation strong. A nation that keeps making room for the next generation never runs short of hands to carry the last.
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