Financing Social Security and Medicare, continued

Although the more big earners make, the smaller the percentage of their earnings they are liable for in payroll taxes, defenders of this system argue that once they reach retirement age, the social security payments they receive are capped — limited by how much they paid in. True, but an inequity that is only compensated for, on average, decades later is still an inequity. Moreover, removing the cap on the payroll tax would be a sensible step toward reversing the trend toward regressive tax and tax break policies that have produced the present state of gross and corrosive income and wealth inequality, and, unlike many proposals for instituting more progressive tax measures, would be immune from clever tax avoidance schemes.