Demise of Social Security

Will you be increasing the maximum benefit as well ?

I would raise the maximum benefits if billionaires have to pay the tax. SocSec is insurance… so how much does a person need in order to live at a spendy, faishionable level?

I’m all for giving a billionaire up to $500,000 a year in SocSec benefits. Honestly, if that insurance amount isn’t enough to fund them at a pretty good level, then they probably need some psych counseling, they have some obsessive disorder centered around money. Or maybe they are just greedy.

My understanding is the system is already progressive… those who pay in less get proportionately more. It’s not an investment, it’s a social benefit. Before SeocSec, old people were literally dying of starvation on the streets.

Funny, I was just ready an email from one of my pastors… discussing worshiping God vs other things… ā€œif you worship money, you will feel like you never have enoughā€. I think that’s what’s going on with some ultra wealthy people.

ā€œBefore Social Security, in 1934, roughly one half of seniors were estimated to be poor. Most had to rely on family or friends, or go to the poor house. As ever more seniors paid into Social Security and then received retirement benefits, the poverty rate among seniors steadily declined from circa 50 percent in the Great Depression to 35 percent in 1959, 25 percent in 1970, 15 percent in 1975, and around 10 percent in 2000, where it has hovered ever since. Today, were it not for Social Security, the senior poverty rate would be 43.5 percent, and just over half of elderly African Americans (51 percent) and Latinos (52 percent) would be poor.ā€

Social Security’s Past, Present and Future.

So you’d be OK with the senior citizen poverty rate going up from 10% to 50%, a 400% increase, because they’d just rely on ā€œfamily, friends, or the poor house?ā€

Here’s your citation, *from lumenlearning.com.
" In 1931 alone, there were at least twenty documented cases of starvation; in 1934, that number grew to 110. In rural areas where such documentation was lacking, the number was likely far higher."

  • Lumen Learning is a Carnegie Mellon partner in evidence-based on-line learning and mission-aligned learning offerings.

I would separate the social concerns into other programs. Make social security strictly a math formula based on what you contributed. I think that’s the most fair thing to do.

Seniors who didn’t save for retirement or hit unfortunate circumstances could go on welfare, right?

Basically, make it so it’s not a ponzi scheme but mandatory (or not) retirement planning.

I didn’t have any choice in the matter for the last 3 decades about the social security being taken from my paycheck, paying for those who were already out of the job market, with the ā€œpromiseā€ that it will be paid by those behind me so i have it as well, period, nothing else matters. Someone saved a dollar more on their own or a million doesn’t matter. it is deducted from us, without option, and those of us who’ve paid in sure as haiti won’t get a refund if/when it’s blown away by furious george and his fElon henchman.

6 months ago would you have believed this is where we’d be today with all the changes?
nothing is off limits.

I said it before and I’ll say it again. We haven’t seen anything yet. It’s going to get much worse considering that the inmates are running the asylum.

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This makes no sense. DOGE/Elon are plugging gaping holes of social security waste and fraud, which will make the program more solvent.

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Maybe, but the previous 4 years set an incredibly low bar, and simply criticizing someone trying to fix something and cheering on failure isn’t going to cut it.

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This is the problem. You are paying for people who never were in the job market, or who contributed nowhere near what they are taking out. That’s the ponzi scheme that should be fixed.

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The last thing I’ll ever say on this forum is this:
Social Security was never a ā€œpay a dollar, get a dollar in returnā€ system.
I had decades in rent to own and saw, first hand, on multiple occasions families that had a member that was disabled to the point there was no job they could do in order to contribute to the funds.
Not much different from someone who pays car insurance for the entire time they drive, yet never make a claim. They lost that money for the promise that ā€œif you need it, it will be thereā€, other than the fact this is taken directly from workers’ paychecks.
I’ve also seen people who were hurt at work, and vehicle crashes, that end up with them unable to work. They paid in what they were making until the injury.
I don’t think ā€œwell sucks to be you buddy, best of luck, thoughts and prayersā€ is a great plan. This plan is far from great, but blindly slashing employees instead of doing things like a business person would do (again, I ran this store for a decade) like not replacing retirees, shuffling people, no sane business owner would just take a swipe like that. It shows how a certain president has failed at almost everything he ran, off his dad’s money, and is nothing more than a hurricane, a load of hot air spinning in circles destroying everything in his path.

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You could always head to Canada, Mexico, Europe or all of the other places that are better !!!

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I choose to stay here and fight against the tyranny of the present administration.

They aren’t attacking waste and fraud. That is part of the issue. They are just making things worse. They fired 7000 people. So now there are less people to answer phones and help. Almost none of the supposed ā€œsavingsā€ are truly savings.

Before you become a dedicated Elon Musk cheerleader maybe you should read up on him.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Elon-Musk/Walter-Isaacson/9781982181284

And not adequately testing software changes

I was able to log in this afternoon but I got a message I hadn’t received before - a collection and use of personal information disclosure.

Can we opt out?

This is part of the screen. While it says that it is voluntary there is no option to opt out. This is displayed if you look at your earnings record.