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Another possible way is means testing. If you've saved enough for retirement on your own, you don't get social security. Personally I think this scenario is one
by harryh 10y ago
Another possible way is means testing. If you've saved enough for retirement on your own, you don't get social security. Personally I think this scenario is one of the more likely ones.
- loeg 10y agoI hope not. One would have to exclude benefits to a lot of people who have been paying the top tax rate for SS to save any significant amount of money. In effect, this would be a retroactive tax. SS has never been a means tested program. See also: > Social Security benefits are relatively evenly distributed among retirees. The vast majority of benefits go to people who are low- or middle-income by any standard. This means that a means test that is focused on taking back benefits from upper income retirees is likely to raise very little money... > This suggests that means testing is not an effective route for reducing the cost of Social Security. Source: http://cepr.net/documents/publications/ss-2011-03.pdf http://cepr.net/documents/publications/ss-2011-03.pdf
- harryh 10y agoYou raise a very good point that means testing wouldn't save very much money unless the cutoff was very low and cut into middle-income retirees. So perhaps my guess about this is wrong. It just seems so politically easy though. "Why should millionaires get SS benefits while the middle-class suffers?" is a good sound bite.