I have started to see this argument being made more often, and wonder if it is a trial balloon: we know that discussions are starting to happen about how to deal with the impending US social security trust fund depletion and the cut in benefits that are going to have to happen.
You already know that your social security benefit depends on the 35 highest income years during your career. You (probably) also know that each of those years get an index number that is used to adjust your income for the purpose of dealing with the effects of inflation when looking at a 35+ year career.
When you file your taxes, you are already reporting the number and ages of each dependent you have. That data already exists. So what if that information is now used as an added indexing factor for each year of reported income? The result would be that the more children you have and the earlier you have them increases the calculated social security benefit. Or rather, since the index would be a floating point number from 0-1, not having a bunch of kids would prevent you from gaining the maximum possible benefit. And it would all be so opaque that it’s hard to notice or understand!
Note that I’m not saying this is what should happen, just that it is strange that we start seeing this kind of argument at the same time we see that discussions are happening about making changes to social security…
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I have started to see this argument being made more often, and wonder if it is a trial balloon: we know that discussions are starting to happen about how to deal with the impending US social security trust fund depletion and the cut in benefits that are going to have to happen.
You already know that your social security benefit depends on the 35 highest income years during your career. You (probably) also know that each of those years get an index number that is used to adjust your income for the purpose of dealing with the effects of inflation when looking at a 35+ year career.
When you file your taxes, you are already reporting the number and ages of each dependent you have. That data already exists. So what if that information is now used as an added indexing factor for each year of reported income? The result would be that the more children you have and the earlier you have them increases the calculated social security benefit. Or rather, since the index would be a floating point number from 0-1, not having a bunch of kids would prevent you from gaining the maximum possible benefit. And it would all be so opaque that it’s hard to notice or understand!
Note that I’m not saying this is what should happen, just that it is strange that we start seeing this kind of argument at the same time we see that discussions are happening about making changes to social security…