Subject: Values: SS is Anti-Family & Anti-Parenting
Our current payroll-tax-funded, pay-as-you-go Social Security retirement system adversely impacts parents and parenting. Any reform that retains a pay-as-you-go system of benefits funded by payroll taxes on the earnings of labor alone is anti-family.
There is a high cost to raising children. Many people now forego this high cost in favor of a better lifestyle. This means that parents are spending money to enable their children to become productive members of society who will eventually pay payroll taxes. Those who are childless are saving and investing that money instead of spending it on children. To the extent that Social Security continues to be a payroll-tax-based, pay-as-you-go system, parents will thus be subsidizing the Social Security benefits of childless persons. Thus whereas childless persons will likely be better off in their retirement because they have used their money for private investment rather than child-rearing, they will benefit from the investment parents have made in children who pay payroll taxes.
We should adopt a fully funded system of mandatory private accounts that includes a safety-net to “top off” accounts that fail to yield a set minimum annuity income by a certain age. Affluence-tested current benefits and recognition for past contributions by current workers should be funded by increases in progressive general federal taxes.
