This is a video that outlines the issue pretty effectively. Although it is around 6 years old, the facts and message are accurate.

For 73 years the Social Security System has been a safety net for the senior citizens in this country. They have paid throughout their lives but now their investment is being threatened. There are now more people in the Social Security System than ever before and it is doomed to perish if change isn’t enacted in the near future. All that it will take, though, is a simple restructuring to even the wealthy biased tax code. There is a provision in the Social Security Tax that only income under $102,000 will be taxed and all income earned above that cap is exempt from this tax. Who does this help? It is a provision that provides an advantage to a privileged group of our society that is without need of assistance. President Obama’s proposed policy of a phased lift of this provision of the Social Security Payroll Tax to 2-4% will begin the equalization of our nation’s wealth and make the Social Security system sustainable far into the future.

The gap between the rich and the poor has been steadily increasing and according to The New York Times, the middle class’s real wage has consistently dropped since 1973 while the rich are increasingly gaining the majority of our country’s wealth. 90% or our country’s wealth is now in the hands of 10% of our country’s elite. Warren Buffet, the billionaire Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, pays only 16% of 34 million dollar income in taxes while his secretary pays 35% of her earnings in income taxes. The dichotomy between the rich and the poor is an unnecessary evil in our prosperous country and can only be reversed through small steps toward equality. A partial lift of the cap on the Social Security Payroll Tax is the first step to a fairer and more equal nation.

Along with the wage gap between the rich and the poor, the fact is that the social security system will go bankrupt in the near future without fundamental change. It is reported by Newsweek that the Social Security System will be losing money by 2018 and bankrupt by 2041. It is a pay-as-you-go system that has a trust fund that was paid into throughout the baby boomer era. It would have a surplus of $2.3 trillion but through the power of government, that money is now in the form of Treasury Bonds to the United States government who used the money to pay down the National Debt. This is a social system started during the great depression to help the elderly avoid soup kitchens and homelessness. It is a forced savings system to avoid the pitfalls of an ever corrupt and volatile investment market. By making those with income more than $102,000 pay a little more with a 2-4% increase in the social security payroll tax, President Obama will ensure the survival of the social security system for our generation.