Take a guess; how many Americans earn $50 million or more per year? Answer: 199 earn a wage or salary of over $50 million a year which turns out to be about $117,000 daily. (Most of the very wealthy get their incomes from investments, not salaries.) Why are these fellow Americans interesting? Why is $117,000 a day an interesting number? Because after today those fellow country men and women stop paying Social Security taxes (they continue to pay Medicare tax all year). The Social Security earnings cap is $117,000 per year.
If you have wages and/or self-employment income that is covered by Social Security you pay Social Security taxes up to a maximum amount that is set by law each year. For 2014, that amount is $117,000 (last year it was $113,700). After tomorrow these folks will pay no Social Security taxes, but they will pay Medicare tax all year long because Medicare, since 1993 has had no cap.
What would happen if everyone eligible paid everything all year long? The Social Security system would be solvent indefinitely and they still would be the richest and prettiest in all the land. Robert Frank was on to them for decades.
Serious Social Security financing options include raising the cap, which happens to be the most popular option among Americans, most of whom earn less than $50,000,000 per year!
This makes so much sense! I wonder what could be the principled reason for opposing raising or eliminating the cap on Social Security payments? The unprincipled “reason” seems to be a high level of class consciousness among the wealthy waging a class war. Am I missing something?