Recently, through a report, the Social Security Administration revealed that in the last 42 years the total percentage subject to Social Security taxes has been reduced from 87% in 1984 to 83% in 2026, and this is due in part to a pronounced inequality that could continue to aggravate the financial crisis in the entity in the coming years.

According to the analysis, not only the decline in the birth rate or the aging of the population could deepen the problem, but also the growing inequality between the income of the best-paid workers, which in recent years has had an exponential increase, compared to the income of lower-middle class employees.

For Elizabeth Wilkins, executive director of the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, “the Social Security trust fund is under pressure because Congress has not updated the program to adapt it to the current economy.”

So far, Social Security only taxes annual incomes of $184,000, missing out on much of the wages of higher earners since they are above the tax limit. “Currently, too much income is concentrated at the top, where it escapes Social Security taxation,” Wilkins points out.

Therefore, one of the proposals to reform the program is to eliminate the tax limit of $184,000 and in this way take into account or require workers with higher incomes to contribute more to the retirement program, since without a reform the trust fund would be heading towards insolvency by the end of 2032.

This would mean that the more than 70 million elderly retirees who are beneficiaries of the program would have up to 22% reduction in their monthly payments; That's about $500 less. This decrease would aggravate the economic difficulties that this population already faces today.

In this regard, Joel Eskovitz, senior director of Social Security and savings at the AARP Public Policy Institute, commented that "Social Security is a very solid program that can be improved. Most Americans want it to be improved without cutting benefits," he said.