Capital Gains and Games

The left/liberal insistence on keeping Social Security under a worker funded insurance model rather than a society wide welfare model is a tactical effort to keep it insulated from people who fundamentally disagree with the entire concept of federal social programs to begin with. If Social Security were simply folded into the General Fund it would be at risk of Norquist-ization, that is of being shrunk down to the point it could be drowned in his proverbial bathtub. On the other hand as wage worker funded insurance that benefits only wage workers we can and do insist that people serving the interests of holders of capital keep their hands off (to limited success). For example LMS advances certain policy goals not directly related to retirement security, that is itself a result of the 'crisis' narrative, if the system is broken why not fix it in a way that has broader benefits? Well that would be fine if the fix actually fixed everything, LMS leaves some gaps. The cap is to be explained the same way. Supporters of Social Security understand that you can only push people so far. We have a social responsibility to allow people who have worked all their lives to have some dignity in retirement. This doesn't translate into the government having total control over your investment portfolio, we are socialists and not dirty commies. The cap is an attempt to draw the line between social and individual responsibility. Personally I think it is set too high, people making over the median generally have access to retirement plans in ways that wage workers significantly under the median typically do not. And clearly there is resentment among people making incomes near the cap who feel, and rightly, that having gotten themselves into a job paying $102,000/year that maybe they can take on this responsibility. But lowering the cap would simultaneously lower support for plans that radically change the nature of Social Security, plans such as LMS, by taking some pressure off. For people who are more insistent on ending SS than mending it, this would be a step backwards.