[Boreas]

Originally Posted by noonereal

It's morally wrong?

John, you are starting to scare me.

Can anyone get Food Stamps, Welfare, Medicaid? All have means tests. All are unhappy who do not qualify.

Those are entitlement programs. The people who receive these didn't pay into a fund for 40 or 50 years in order to receive Food Stamps, Welfare or Medicare commensurate with their previous contributions.

Social Security is an earned benefit, not unlike a sort of government annuity. People (over a certain age) receive benefits the amount of which is determined by the amount they paid in over their working lives. To means test an earned benefit is basically cheating people out of some or all of the compensation for the money they've paid in.

It astonishes me that you can't see the difference here.

If you want to worry about moralities first worry about sending 22 year old's into the world with 4 years of debt. Worry about the morality of continuing to make healthcare unattainable to millions, worry about morality of the price of prescription drugs that the government pays for.... while funding many of the studies.

All of this is totally irrelevant to a conversation about Social Security.

How are you justifying a tax that is effectively regressive in nature and then claiming the ones who benefit from it's structure, since it's inception, need their emotional state guarded? God forbid something be perceived not fair to them, how would they ever deal!

It's not really a tax in the conventional sense that the taxes go to fund government services. Social Security payroll deductions are basically invested by the government on your behalf as insurancce against poverty i n old age. It's in essence a retirement insurance premium. I justify it on the basis of the direct financial benefit that accrues from that payment.

I can also justify it on the basis that the premium is assessed on the basis of earnings. The more you earn, the more you pay so, actually, it isn't regressive. Sales tax is regressive since everyone pays their 8 or 10% on whatever they buy so it disproportionately impacts people with low incomes.

Yes, I realize there's an earnings cap on the amount that people pay into Social Security. What you seem to be overlooking is that there's also a cap on benefits. The benefits one receives are based on what one pays in.