[lotsofpulp]

This is not correct. For people who earn less than the SS wage cap ($184.5k in 2026), Social Security is a progressive tax due to the bend points in the benefit formula. You explicitly get less benefit for each additional dollar you pay in tax.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/bendpoints.html

But every dollar of income earned over the SS wage cap reduces effective tax rate. The more you earn, the less the effective Social Security tax rate is for you. At Elon Musk levels, it rounds down to zero. Therefore, there would be no motivation for super rich people to get rid of social security.

The only material reduction in tax rate would be for those relying on annual earned income of a few hundred thousand dollars or less (i.e. the bottom 95% of income earners).

[kristofferR]

That's what I'm saying, they pretend that the only way to fix SS is to cut services/replace it, because actually fixing it without cuts would involve removing the lobbyhole/cap that makes their rate close to zero.