Reply #13: Even the proposed cuts to Social Security will hit the young

[Alcibiades]

hardest. The most draconian cut proposed has been the adoption of a chained CPI, which will decrease the benefits to workers retiring later much more than it will hurt current retirees. You're right about the regressive nature of the current system: the one social security tax increase that would help the progessivity of the system would be lifting the cap on earned income taxable, but you don't hear so much about that proposal any more.

From what I've seen, the truth of the matter is that the older generation has had to support the younger one more than vice versa. The government collects FICA from people who are still in their earning years and pays benefits to benefitiaries, whose own payments were stolen from the trust fund beginning in the Reagan years. These folks then have to turn around and help out their kids and grandkids, not because the tax burden on young people is so high, but because all the high value added jobs have been offshored, because of student loan debt, because wages have not kept up with the cost of raising a family, and because the young were hit hardest by the housing market crash ginned up by Wall Street.