Heard on MPR
A couple of programs in the past 6 weeks on MPR have mentioned the financial mess of our country. Like what else are they talking about ad nauseoum? I listen because I prefer it to the other radio choices which are poor to very poor.
Every once in awhile some very interesting bits of information come out of my kitchen radio. Usually it is stuff that if we stop and think about it, we should know already, but most of us never expand our minds that far. First tidbit was presented by an economist. One of the big reasons why the Social Security Trust Fund is losing money is because of the fact that a lot of people's salaries have surpassed the $170,000 per year cap at which they are to contribute to the fund.
He mentioned the percentage of wage earners 30 years ago who made $170,000 or over and the percentage today. The increase has been tremendous. With my hands in the bread dough, I did not get a chance to write it down. Naturally with fewer people contributing, there is less money. Makes sense.
Recently another economist stated that raising that cap to $180,000 of income would stabilize the trust fund for another 70 years. Seems like a no brainer. However, it also seems like Congress has no brains! end
posted by Judy D. Hanson @ 5:51 AM
5 Comments:
The Social Security wage base for CY2012 was $106,800. The information you heard on MPR is totally incorrect.
Your information is wrong. Here is Wage Base information taken from SSA.GOV. The amounts below are the maximums for Social Security contributions.
Year Amount
2006 $94,200
2007 97,500
2008 102,000
2009 106,800
2010 106,800
2011 106,800
2012 110,100
2013 113,700
Thanks for the correction. I am wondering where the $170,000 figure is coming from as I hear it quoted in a number of places.
The second point would be that when more people are making higher salaries-like $113,700 and higher, and are not contributing to the social security fund, the fund is being drawn down. This cap should be raised so the fund remains viable and stable.
We all must be aware of the multitude of misinformation appearing in BLOGs. Repeated often enough it soon becomes fact. I believe that what needs to be done to correct the eventual shortfall in SSA funding is to eliminate the Wage Base cap, just like the Medicare Tax. There is no wage cap for Medicare wages. Your thoughts?
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