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“They already face quite a high burden from the payroll tax – on an annual basis, they currently pay more than $8,000 a year on their less than $70,000 income just for Social Security,” Boccia told FOX Business.
She added: “If we had to raise payroll taxes to avoid any benefit reductions, they would pay over $10,000 a year just for Social Security” to keep the program solvent for 75 years.
Social Security’s financial collapse is no longer a distant warning — it’s a fast-approaching reality.
The program’s main trust funds are expected to run out of money by early 2034. Once that happens, the law requires automatic benefit cuts averaging 24% unless Congress steps in.
The reason is simple: there aren’t enough workers to support the growing number of retirees.
In the 1950s, 16 workers contributed to support just one retiree. By the mid-1980s, it was down to just over three. Today, it’s fewer than three workers per retiree — and the ratio keeps shrinking.
This demographic collapse guarantees that younger workers will shoulder a heavier burden — unless politicians make tough choices now.
So what’s Washington’s answer? Higher taxes.
Social Security’s trustees estimate payroll taxes would need to jump from 12.4% to over 16% permanently in order to keep the system solvent.
“It would be a significant increase in the tax burden for these workers,” Boccia warned.
She didn’t mince words about what that means in real life: “Think about what $2,000 or $3,000 a year buys – for some people, this is their annual grocery budget, for others it might be a car payment.”
A worker making $70,000 would see their payroll tax bill soar from $8,000 to over $10,000 a year. And that’s just the starting point.
But Boccia says the plan wouldn’t just crush workers — it could wreck the economy.
“It would be incredibly economically destructive because of the extremely high marginal tax rates that it would impose on, say, small business owners, for example, where you would be at a level of taxation where you would actually collect less in taxes at a higher rate,” she explained.
She warned this is exactly what the Laffer Curve predicts: punishing tax rates drive people to work less, invest less, and find ways to avoid paying altogether.
In states already drowning in high taxes, like California and New York, the pain would be unbearable.
To make matters worse, recent legislation has accelerated Social Security’s collapse.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is expected to drain an additional $168.6 billion from the trust funds over the next decade — moving insolvency up even sooner, from late 2034 to early 2034.
“The longer Congress waits to reform Social Security, the more painful and consequential the remaining options on the table will be, because every year that Congress waits, certain options expire,” Boccia warned.
But here’s the harsh truth: lawmakers are terrified of cutting benefits, which means higher taxes are their only play. That “solution” would crush the very workers the system claims to protect.
Young Americans are waking up to the reality that Washington sold them a false promise.
Instead of “protecting seniors,” politicians are setting up the next generation to carry an unbearable financial burden — one that strips away years of earnings and stifles opportunity.
The real question now: will Congress finally level with the American people about the true cost of saving Social Security, or keep passing the buck until the entire system collapses?
Either way, young workers have gotten the message loud and clear: they were handed a broken system and told to pay the bill.
