According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 1 percent of the United States’ 115 million households have a net worth of $6.8 million or greater.
The top 5 percent have a net worth of $1.9 million or greater.
If just the top 1 percent of wealthiest households gave up their Social Security income, assuming two-thirds of these households are of retirement age and will receive benefits averaging $30,000 a year, more than $200 billion would be saved in the first 10 years.
That would contribute greatly to resolving the projected funding gap. If Social Security is gradually phased out for the wealthiest 5 percent of households, beginning with just a 10 percent benefit reduction, the savings climbs to nearly $500 billion over 10 years.
Remember, wealthy households received a windfall of sorts with the recent changes to estate tax law, a tax pioneered by Republican Theodore Roosevelt, and continue to benefit from a discount of as much as 40 percent in calculating estate taxes when privately held businesses are passed on.
You are going to get flamed by Freepers who fail to read that this is HIS RECOMMENDATION, LOL!
Why should I contribute my money if I can’t get it back. It will no longer be a “retirement program” forced upon me by the government. It will be just another tax... (Spreading my wealth to Obama’s people)
Is that before or after we put the final nail in our collective coffin with legalizing 30 million illegal aliens?
Just do away with Social Security altogether and let us invest our own money.
Give me an option to opt out of Social Security and I would do it in a heartbeat. Otherwise don’t ask me to give up what I have been paying into for over 38 years at my current age of 54. Social Secuity has the ability to suck another 15 years of contribution from me.
Why should I if I am fortunate enouth to amass a net worth in the top 5% or even in the top 1% give up something that I was required to pay into for 53 years.
Again this is a socialist view of redistribution of wealth in America. Why should I not receive my benefit if I have paid into SS all my working days.
Also don’t F-ck with my 401k and try and steal that money from me too.
It depends greatly on what ‘they’ call rich.
In many instances, those ‘rich’ are probably involved in business affairs that generate much more than they would get via Social Security.
This is another sound-good-ism liberal idea that fails to consider the unintended consequences.
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Soon, they will be coming for the savings accounts, after they determine the maximum amount each person should have. Those who save more than the determined amount will have to share their excess with those less fortunate or those who just didn’t know how to save or those who preferred to spend all their money instead of saving.
But, hey, it’s the idea that counts, and it looks good on paper. So what could go wrong?
Had they left SS alone, there would have been more $$$ available. All those people who contributed and died before 62 left their investment, it wasn’t like it went to their heirs. NOOO, they couldn’t do that, there was too much there that could be use for other project, so screw SS. Sorry, its the way I see it.
In other words, more theft.
if all the many thousands and thousands of newspaper employees were to “give up” their SSA pensions, it would also help the federal government have more money (to waste, or use to suppress Americans and our liberties, or use to arm our enemies in the MuslimBrotherhoods of the world, or use to train fish how to evade their predators, or use to teach Kenyans how to use condoms, or all sorts of wonderful things!)
Let’s confiscate the SSA accounts of the newspaper writers!
Let’s make a deal.
I’ll give up ALL FUTURE payments, forfeit all my prior SS contributions (tens of thousands) and my right to claim them, if you’ll just STOP taking my money for this Ponzi scheme NOW.
The federal government has long worked to prevent people from doing just that. That is, if you accept Social Security money *at all*, you are automatically enrolled in Medicare. And once in, you cannot easily get out.
Therefore, the way to get people off Medicare and Social Security is a several step process, done in such a way as to minimize the number of people harmed by the reform.
To start with, make a deal for older people still earning income from all taxable sources, that if they refuse to take either Social Security or Medicare, they can deduct slightly more from their taxable income.
This would mean saving more money than they are getting from the government. But if they need that money, they still can get it.
It also turns Medicare for them into something more like insurance, with a deductible, and savings for the money they do not spend on health care, thus encouraging them to shop around.
The next step is to expand the deal to those most of the way through to retirement. If they are still working, though, they can get deductions for their current year plus a previous year.
Then limit new entries into the SS system to just minimum wage earners with no other source of retirement. Everyone else is out of that system. This would slash the future size of SS by three quarters or more.
Everybody else gets IRAs.
The last piece of the puzzle is to make Medicaid entirely per capita block grants to states. With the provision that if they cheat to drive out their poor, their funding gets slashed.
“My fear is not that we end up looking like Europe but rather that we look like the bifurcated societies of Latin America.”........................................ Yeah, with no toilet paper too.
Then the “wealthy” should not have to pay social security taxes.
one percent is noise.
I knew this was going to happen once they started talking about “means testing” for social security a few years ago. It is a logical development, as social security then just becomes another massive wealth transfer program. Those who produce will be taxed to fund those who do not, with the bureaucracy skimming a bunch of money off the top.
There is no law making it mandatory for anyone to sign up for Social Security when they turn 62 or 65.
And there is no law requiring them to keep, or cash, any checks they receieve from Social Security.
So how many wealthy leftists retired from the Washington Post have decided to NOT sign up for Social Security distributions?
How many wealthy democrats who have bought into Obama’s cry for more taxes so everyone can have a “Fair Share” send in extra money to the IRS at tax time?
How many wealthy leftists have decided to NOT sign up for Social Security distributions?
So those who contributed the most to the system should voluntarily receive nothing from it.
I have a more fair and moral idea than intimidation and theft. Offer them a buyout, all the money they paid in plus a fair rate of return.