3 Ideas for Funding Social Security

Social Security reforms can preserve its promise

As Social Security’s financing challenge comes to a head, any approach that leads with—or even considers—benefits cuts would be a grave mistake. Slashing benefits would violate the spirit of the long-standing program, and would be disingenuous given the many viable reforms that could bring in revenue to fill the funding gap.

In a new essay collection, Roosevelt’s Good Life Residents on Social Security present three creative ways to update the program. Their proposals would strengthen Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signature policy and help ensure its promises of guaranteed, progressive, and easily accessible benefits for millions of retired and disabled Americans and their families.

• Tyler Bond examines options for raising and eliminating the cap on earnings subject to Social Security contributions.
• Jonathan Schwabish looks at new revenue sources beyond payroll taxes, from taxes on investment to assets to inheritance.
• Lena Simet argues for better enforcement against workers being misclassified as independent contractors and business owners reporting their income as profits not subject to Social Security taxes.

Watch our virtual panel during which Bond, Schwabish, and Simet discussed their proposals live. 

Read the collection: How to Fund Social Security with the Economy We Have

And watch Roosevelt’s Rey Fuentes on the Pitchfork Economics podcast, where he discussed how inequality and wage stagnation led to Social Security’s current challenge—and how to solve it by tapping into more revenue.

Join us: Putting tax reform at the center of the pro-democracy movement 

On Wednesday, September 16 at 2:00 pm ET, join Roosevelt’s Suzanne Kahn in conversation with Senior Tax Fellow Brian Galle, Fellow Samarth Gupta, and political scientist Nate Kelly about tax code reforms to reduce inequality and create a more democratic governing system. 

The panelists will explore how tax reform can rebalance economic and political power, curb the influence of the ultra-wealthy and corporations, and restore public faith in government.

What else we’re up to

• “What is the point of our governing institutions?” Roosevelt President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins gave her take in a Substack live conversation with Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman: “Is it just to lower costs for people? No. It is actually to center human flourishing and to make possibility real for people.”
• Rejecting the race to the bottom over corporate taxes. In a new brief, Roosevelt Fellow Zorka Milin takes on the myth that keeping corporate taxes low is necessary for US competitiveness.
  • “Corporate tax is not just a business cost to be minimized,” Milin writes, “but a necessity for funding the essential public goods that are the prerequisite of an attractive investment climate.”
• What fighting for childcare looks like in a state that isn’t investing. Mississippi is not a leader in childcare, but advocates in the state are harnessing the momentum across the country to fight for families. In an interview with Roosevelt’s Lena Bilik, Matt Williams of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative spoke about the “centrality of childcare as an anti-poverty issue, and one creative way the movement fought for—and won—additional funding recently.”
• Private equity firms can’t flip the companies they took over—and that might hurt the rest of us. As private equity firms amass more and more debt, experts say they should brace themselves for collapse. “Someone is going to lose out,” Roosevelt’s Brad Lipton told The Guardian, “and all too often that can be workers.” 

What we’re talking about