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It's rigged
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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The reason this works out that way is because there is a wage base for the social security tax. If you don’t make more than that base then you pay that tax all year long. If you’re making 1m then you pay that tax for like the first two months and then nothing afterwards. The solution to this is just removing the wage base. If you make 1m you should pay the same percentage as everybody else on all your earnings. Magically the social security system will be overfunded.
The other thing to get rid of is long term capital gains taxes and just tax capital gains as regular income.
Explain please? It's about the tax rate between those two? I thought the problem with CGT is that people dodge it by taking loans secured by their capital/stock. This does not seem to fix this problem...
LTCG means that I can 15% or 20% (depending on income) on selling stock even if I'm otherwise in a high tax bracket. Why should I get to have a massive tax break just because I already have a lot of income? There's nothing special about my income from stock vs. my income from employment other than I work a hell of a lot harder for my income from employment than I do my income from stock.
0% if your taxable income is under $96,700 as a married, filing jointly household.
“Normal” people do not avoid paying these taxes by taking loans with their accounts as collateral. That applies only to multi-billionaires.
Most people pay a lower tax rate on long-term capital gains as compared to income. Raising this rate could discourage investing.
Most people don't have enough capital gains to tax. If they do have capital gains it's either in there house and unrealized or in a retirement account and deferred. Raising the capital gains tax almost exclusively targets the wealthy, not necessarily billionaires but still top quintile.
What else are people going to do with there money then? Keep it in cash and lose even more of it to inflation then you would with the tax?
The point of long term capital gains tax is so people don't just yank money out all the time. It provides incentive to keep your money in the market.
That said, making the ltcg tax just 2% less than your income tax seems better than a flat 13% or whatever it is.
No it doesn't. The vast majority of my stock has LTCG treatment. When I sell, I sell that stock because of the preferential tax treatment and let my non-qualified stock bake longer. You either have the wealth to be in the market and can play the game or you don't and you're not in the market. I've lived both lives.
Also, while paying my property tax bill, I noticed that the government has no problem taxing me for an assessed value of my property without me actually realizing my gains.
Of course, that is a property tax and not a capital gains tax, but it just shows that they definitely don't have to wait until you sell to tax on capital gains. Just have an official assessment of value for investments.
We're talking about a cap and not a base, but yeah... remove the cap and everything gets better.
That’s effectively what it is but it’s called the social security wage base.
TIL - interesting language... even the article goes on to call it a cap multiple times even though the official title is what you listed. Thanks for sharing!
Welcome to American politics: where the rules are made up and the words don't matter
With Social Security, the amount you get out is directly related to the amount you pay in. So if the cap is increased, yes, social security will get more income, but they'll also need to start paying out a whole ton more.
It's more of a forced savings/investment account than a wealth redistribution scheme. There is some redistribution happening, but not as much as most people think.
Removing the income cap is the obvious first step to balancing the social security budget, but it's not enough to make the system solvent long term.
There are a number of ways to fix the remaining shortfall, but removing the cap is really the only easy measure and we can't even do that. All others involve some amount of pain. This interactive calculator is worth spending a bit messing with: https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/
Over funded how? Right now they still collect social security. Are you suggesting they should pay more into SS and then collect less to turn it into a tax?
Pay their fair share is what it is called.6
They do. SS is not a tax. It’s a required investment plan. The reason it’s skewed in percentage is because it maxes out and is shown relative to their income. Just raise taxes the proper way.
Yes.
Why not raise taxes instead of ruining a honorable program?
What does honorable mean in this context? Pay in on what you earn, that's all. That would be honorable. If you make millions, why do you care? Your retirement is safe either way, help others have at least a little security.