Watch Out, Grandma!

The latest scheme to 'fix the debt' by breaking Social Security.

By Joel Bleifuss

If the circus surrounding the so-called fiscal cliff has taught us anything, it is that politics revolves around the question of how wealth and power should be distributed in our society, i.e. who will be the winners and who will be the losers. Some [RETURN TO ARTICLE]

  • Reader Comments

    Social Security benefits lift about 21.4 million Americans out of poverty. It can be made solvent for nearly 75 years by taking the cap off salary contributions. So when I hear Obama mentioning reducing benefits, he angers me. We need a broad coalition to make sure this doesn’t happen. Millions of Americans are still deep in debt and unemployed. They are hardly able to help dependents on Social Security whose incomes would be cut. The history of adjustments or “bumps” to save the recipients of the least support is that Congressional “adjustments” often lag behind for many years. Surely conservatives could attack Social Security spending at some later time! Simply eliminating the cap on contributions would only affect about 6% of the highest earners covered by Social Security (above $110,000 per year.) See, online “The Evolution of the Social Security Tax Max” and “Distributional Effects of Raising the Social Security Tax Max.”) This would be a tax transfer from very high income recipients in a given year to poor recipients.

    Posted by Robert Cogan on Jan 22, 2013 at 8:34 PM