Why is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, hyperventilating about Social Security? Why is he inventing unhinged tales about “fraudulent” hordes of Social Security grifters? Why is his “DOGE” chopping away staffers at the already understaffed Social Security Administration?

Let’s start with the political reality that most Americans see Social Security as absolutely essential to their future financial security. These average Americans, Musk and his like-minded super wealthy fear, are eventually going to start demanding that America’s rich pay a far bigger share of the revenue Social Security so desperately needs.

What are these rich paying now into Social Security? Peanuts.

Social Security’s basic math: Employees currently pay 6.2 percent of the money they make into the Social Security system. Their employers match that 6.2 percent. Self-employed Americans, for their part, pay 12.4 percent.

But this funding set-up comes with two incredibly consequential catches that royally benefit our nation’s highest earners.

The first: Only paycheck income faces a Social Security tax levy. Most Americans get the vast bulk of their income from their paychecks. Rich people don’t. Our richest get most of their income from the investments they make with their wealth. This investment income — everything from the profits the rich make selling assets to the stock dividends they collect — faces no Social Security tax.

The second catch: Top corporate executives and other Americans with hefty paychecks only pay Social Security tax on a fraction of their pay. In 2025, all paycheck income over $176,100 will face not a penny of Social Security tax.

The savings our most affluent reap from both these two loopholes can run staggeringly high. Here in 2025, the economist Teresa Ghilarducci points out, at least 229 corporate and banking honchos making above $50 million per year will have essentially “paid all their Social Security taxes for the entire year” before the end of the year’s first morning!

How long can Social Security’s financing continue to go on like........

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