I would love to see the government means test disability recipients. Add in a rule that a person making over a certain amount is not eligible to receive SS, being the USSC has ruled that it is “welfare”. Turn around then and raise the bottom of the payments up to $1,500-$2K per month, but only for those who have earned their way in first, not the non-workers who draw pay, and have never worked. There are many women who abstained from welfare while raising children without a spouse, who made very little money for years. Hence only a $700 check each month. Republicans must have an answer for the Dims idea of minimum income for all. Make it a decent level of benefit after the work life is over at least. It will sell, and it MUST be done. Sometimes you have to purchase votes, and this is a great way to support the elderly and the truly handicapped.
“I would love to see the government means test disability recipients.”
Why? If a person works and pays Social Security taxes, and becomes disabled, why is he not entitled to the benefit for which he paid?
“Add in a rule that a person making over a certain amount is not eligible to receive SS,...”
Again, why? Same question.
Social Security benefits are already heavily skewed toward low wage workers.
Your idea amounts to an even more aggravated theft than the current system thus making it deeply immoral, but as well, really stupid.
I already paid my 15.6% to the federal mafia. I also saved for my retirement separately. That’s what folks are SUPPOSED to do.
As it is, someone who makes minimum wage all his life will get about 72% income replacement in retirement from Social Security at normal retirement age.
For someone at the top of the Social Security taxable income scale, the very maximum benefit is about 26% of income.
The government can get away with this level of theft because the individual can boost his earnings through his own private savings. If you penalize folks even more for doing the RIGHT THING, fewer will do it. So, these folks will have less on which to retire. And they will notice that poor people get relatively much more out of the system than they do. And they will demand equal treatment.
But, without raising taxes astronomically high, the federal mafia will be unable to pay higher wage workers 72% of their final income. The fix? Reduce the benefits of the poor.
I’ll propose a deal: Let’s deny high income earners their just Social Security benefits, and let them out of paying Social Security taxes.
Of course, the whole system will collapse quickly, but hey, what the heck?
The dirty little (not too) secret is that Social Security only survives because high income earners are willing to HEAVILY subsidize the checks of low income folks. Without the goose of high income earners, there would be no golden eggs at all for poor folks, and they’d have no Social Security checks at all.