Current payroll taxes should be directed back for the benefit of the worker who pays the tax and to no other person. Mandatory private investment accounts should be established for each worker. Current Social Security benefits should be paid for with progressive general taxes NOT with regressive payroll taxes.
Social Security is a failed, broken system at this very moment. It prevents current working people TODAY from providing for their own families and from preparing for their own retirements. And TOMORROW, by the SSA's own numbers, it will not be able to pay them full benefits.
The only moral justification for Social Security's use of regressive payroll taxes to fund the benefits of current retirees is the "social contract" whereby the payer of the tax receives the promise of an equivalent "quid pro quo" benefit. Apart from this justification, the whole of Social Security should have been funded in the first place by progressive general federal taxes.
But now the social contract is broken and the moral justification for Social Security's regressive tax structure is gone. Whatever continuing moral obligation is owed to current retirees to fund their Social Security benefits should be seen as the moral obligation and burden of the United States as a whole - to be paid for by us all on a progressive general tax basis.
It is immoral to continue to fund current benefits with regressive taxes paid only by workers who earn the lowliest of wages up to the current cap.
