Having the wealthy pay "their fair share" ignores the uncomfortable fact that Social Security was not supposed to be an entitlement, and there was never supposed to be anybody's "fair share" in the fund except each person's own money. The money was supposed to have been invested, so it earned income while the person was working so he or she could then draw down the money his/her investment had earned as a pension.
But, Noooooo ... the geniuses who run our government saw all that moeny sitting there and decided they could just "borrow" some of it to pay the day-to-day expenses of running the government. And now that they've borrowed much more than they can figure out how to repay, they act like it's a big mystery why Socuial Security is in trouble.
Social Security
today is trillions in surplus - the money is in a special class of government bonds, similar in concept to T-bills or savings bonds, but exclusive to SS funds. Being in surplus, SS
today is not contributing to the current national debt; in fact, it's
funding the national debt, since .gov has "borrowed" the money.
The problem is, with cash flow projections, SS is slated to go into negative cash flow in 20 years or so; that's a problem.
What I find disturbing is that a program that has old age benefits based on the premise that they'll be paid to people who WORKED and CONTRIBUTED for 3 or 4 decades is supposed to be "balanced" in the future by benefit cuts - WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH TRANSFERRING WELFARE BENEFITS TO SS? Since 2012, we've been spending over $1,000,000,000,000.00 a year on UNEARNED welfare benefits, which include everything from direct payments to free Obama phones . . . NONE OF WHICH WERE EARNED BY THE RECIPIENTS!
Why do lifetime freeloaders have higher priority for .gov funding than retired working people?