Social Security

Because Social Security is really about the ability of current workers to pay for those who have come before us, the solvency of Social Security largely depends on how productive our workforce becomes in the next few decades. A highly productive workforce can meet the demands placed on the system by retirees. Productivity requires reinvestment and investment requires funds to be available through a high savings rate. Both of these are at all-time lows. We must also expand our workforce toward full employment so that, in a strictly policy sense, more people are contributing to the system.

In short, we need to have policies that encourage both savings and work:

Reduce the payroll tax to encourage work and job growth, and replace lost revenue through pollution taxes on things we want to discourage like carbon emissions and by eliminating the payroll tax cap and making progressive the rate above the current cap.

Reduce the national debt, which is essentially a tax on future generations, by cutting corporate welfare, unnecessary earmark appropriations and tax expenditures, subsidies to oil, mining and timber industries, and the largest farms, and by reforming the tax code for simplicity and fairness.

Protect Social Security from privatization to ensure that the program serves its public purpose of bring greater certainty and security to retirees and is not subjected to downturns in the market.

Protect private pensions by strengthening the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and ensuring that legal pension obligations are met.

Encourage work and full employment by providing for a public need unmet by the private sector with a jobs program based on the principles of the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. Projects could provide for a cleaner environment, more sustainable public transportation sector and a public energy infrastructure to meet future needs.

Encourage worker productivity by channeling public investment into a better education system and a universal single-payer expansion of Medicare for all Americans. The more productive our workforce becomes, the better we are able to meet demands placed on the system.

Encourage workers' savings rates by increasing the earned income tax credit, reducing the payroll tax for middle- to low income wage earners and replacing the regressive 401K contribution credit with a more equitable federal program of matching savings contributions up to a certain capped amount.