Social Security is not going broke

When I saw the heading of this Reuters opinion piece I knew that I had to read it.  Like any trade or investment strategy, you would want to consider the other side.

The main theme that most people have heard is that Social Security is going broke.  Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston take the opposite side of the Social Security debate.  Johnston offers up some interesting opinions regarding how the burden of the tax has shift from the wealthy onto the middle and lower classes.

Here are a few of his points form the article here including a few solutions he offers to help continue to fund the program

• From 1961 through 2011, the year covered in the last Social Security report, Social Security taxes exploded from 3.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product to 5.5 percent.
• In 1983, President Ronald Reagan sponsored an increase in Social Security taxes, changing the program from pay-as-you-go to collecting much more taxes than it paid in benefits. The idea was to have the Boomers prepay part of their old age benefits. The extra tax was supposed to pay off the federal debt and then be invested in federal bonds. Instead, Reagan ran huge deficits, violating his 1980 promise to balance the federal budget within three years of taking office.