Big surprise: Washington to hit the "rich" on Social Security

When Jayson on Polipundit referred to an opinion piece in the Washington Times as an essay on the "National Ponzi Scheme" I knew exactly what Jayson was referring to. The article notes that President Bush has left the door open to raise the income cap which is taxable under Social Security. The taxable income cap is currently around $88K, but raising the cap would soak the rich a little bit more, essentially erasing all doubt that Social Security is a welfare program and not a pension program:

As it is, there is already an increasingly tenuous relationship between taxes paid and benefits received by high-income workers. According to the Congressional Research Service, in 1980 a retiree with lifetime earnings at or above the Social Security wage cap got back all of his and his employer's contributions in 3.1 years. By 2000, it took 24.9 years and by 2010 it will take 35.3 years. Under current projections, a high-income worker retiring in 2030 will need 55 years of benefits to get back all his contributions.

Even FDR, the architect of Social Security, recognized the dangers of a pension system that depended on taxes from wealthy individuals and would, in turn, have to pay out proportional SS checks. The current mood among Democrats and some Republicans (like Lindsay Graham) is that Social Security should grab more income while keeping benefits flat. This is a recipe for politicial and class conflict.