The SS wage cap goes up almost every year. Currently, it is $117,000. In 2007 it was $97,500. There is no wage cap for Medicare taxes, which are 1.45% each for employer and employee. The total payroll tax is 15.3%.
The tax rate for OASDI (SS and DI) is 6.2% each for the employer and employee or 12.4%. Social Security Tax Rates
That a person has provided 14% of their income to the Government for their entire working life for a program that promises to provide a retirement income for them and is a realistic expectation that they should receive a return on their “investment”
SS is an insurance program, not a pension plan. The money you contribute does not belong to you once deposited into the SSTF. See SCOTUS case Flemming v. Nestor.
You could pay into SS for 50 years, drop dead a day before being scheduled to receive benefits, and all you would get is a small burial allowance. Your contributions are not part of your estate.
Current SS recipients will get far more out of SS than they contributed into it. In the case of Medicare, the average recipient gets three times more in benefits than they contributed.
“Current SS recipients will get far more out of SS than they contributed into it”
Bought the government propaganda did ya? If you are talking totaling their contributions, you are of course correct. And everyone with a mutual fund or an IRA for 4 decades also gets more out of it than they put into it.
But do some math. Take that 15% stream of payments, stretch it out over 45 years, and compound interest from even a very conservative investment strategy, and it’s clear they are not getting more than they contributed. They are actually having more than 2/3 of their expected return stolen.
And as someone else pointed out, if they drop dead the day before, ALL of it is stolen.