Beto Wants to Means Test Social Security
Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 03/25/2019 - 12:50am
Is this an attack or sharing information relevant to 2020? I say the latter. https://t.co/8fa8tpzrzO
— barbara cummings (@BarbaracOnline) March 25, 2019
Beto Obama's kids will never have to rely on social security because their dad is a billionaire!
At least Obama waited until his second term to put social security on the butchers block. Not Beto and Switch. Next!
Comments
beto and.....
You sure you don't mean "Beto and Suck", snoop?
For it sure sounds like things will Suck for us 99%ers i he ever gets elected President.....
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
There is an idea
We should have a contest to decide what to name Beto. Beto and Switch has been stated a few times here.
We already have Kamillary and Kambama for Harris.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Billioneto Ol'garch?
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Bait-O
My nomination is for Bait-O. That is how we should spell it. Because that is what he is. He is bait-o for the 'bluenomatterwhos'. No platform, perfect for the establishment Dems. Stinks like catfish bait, but empty and otherwise worthless. Just hoping to peel votes from a good candidate like all the rest of the also-rans. He worked with (road trip) a Repub last mid-terms, just like Biden spoke for and endorsed another.
The means test that should take place is minimum wage, is it a means to live? Then those people that have the means, that make over $125k/yr., have the means to chip in and that is
the cap that should be raised, to about a mil at least. And after a mil you have the means so you pay more.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
and Kalamity Kop
NYCVG
Beto paves the way to second term for Donald Trump
It is already means tested, isn't it? If you earn too much money you have to pay taxes on the SS. What they need to do is remove the cap on SS taxes paid on high incomes, and leave it the fuck alone.
I recall
I recall Hillary making noise about means testing Social Security early in the 2016 primary. I think the way she put it was that she'd focus on preserving SS for the poorest economic levels. That's code for means testing.
I suspect the kind of means testing they're aiming for involves assessing recipients' assets.
A working class couple who've worked their behinds off for 50 years, and paid Soc Sec taxes out of every paycheck. 20 years ago, they paid off the mortgage on the 1,000 square foot family home, intending to live in it during retirement and make ends meet with their SS payments ...
Oops. Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Williams. We see that you own real estate. That means you're too "wealthy" to qualify for Social Security. You need to sell the house and live off the proceeds. When the money's all gone, if you're still alive (we're hoping you won't be), come back and re-apply and we'll see if you're finally poor enough to get back some of the money you paid into FICA all those years.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
You pretty much nailed it.
Plus increasing the tax rate on SS.
Something like that happened to me
Except it was MadiCal rather than SS. My income is all of $1150/mo in SS disability but I was turned down because I'd paid off my mortgage and had more than $2000 in the bank. (disclaimer; It's a condo in CA and "more than $2000 is actually $420,000 - I'm not making myself a poster boy for a moral argument. OTOH in 5 or 10 years I will probably need assisted living, so how long will that last?)
On to Biden since 1973
TPB want to
own all property and people.
So, no, you can't have your stuff anymore.
dfarrah
Well, they've already maxed their credit...
So looks like it's time to start selling off the furnishings.
Works even better if you can sell other people's furnishings.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
If you look at American real estate
what you see is a competition between American banksters and Chinese billionaires to see who can gobble up everything first. That's what 0% interest rates and a negative trade balance gets you. Nixon was deadly wrong giving MFN status to China, W was deadly wrong selling billions of t-bills to China to pay for his idiotic war, and Obama was deadly wrong printing $21 trillion, giving it to the banks and telling them to buy stocks. (In fairness that was W's plan, he just carried it out, and W got the idea from Reagan.)
On to Biden since 1973
I would worry about that type of means testing perversion.
Right now, it follows the principles of Universal Basic Income. Everybody gets a check whether they need it or not. We must insist on equal benefits and build on it. If it is means tested, it will degrade social unity. I hope people are wise to that.
@Pluto's Republic correct.
correct.
Both parts. Yes to taxes paid on SS if your income is high.
And yes to eliminate the cap and solve the funding of SS forever. As Bernie has repeatedly recommended.
The plan to lower benefits for recipients is a Shtup the Rich and Starve the Poor scheme.
NYCVG
Means testing reinforces the false narrative
that Social Security is a welfare program. No, it is an insurance program for those who paid into it. Raising the current cap on wages taxed by Social Security is one way to strengthen the trust fund. Another way, which I never see anyone bring up, is to increase the minimum wage.
Beto is just another empty suit corporatist neoliberal.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Yes, but SS is reverse means tested.
If you make your money off of stock manipulation you don't pay FICA tax.Make all income subject to FICA and we can gave M4A, free college, and the Green New Deal and Guaranteed Minimum Income and ice cream on Sunday.
On to Biden since 1973
Geez, and if salaries
had kept up with productivity and we hadn't shipped jobs overseas, we might not be having this conversation.
Thank you, overlords, for mucking up everything.
dfarrah
I don't agree with raising the cap
Unless the benefit cap is raised too. I want to keep SS paid insurance and not take unrelated money. A minor tax increase gets us over the hump. About 0.5% from both employee and employer, scheduled to sunset when we boomers are dead.
Two things have driven this crisis since the last fix in the '80s. 1) wages have not kept pace with inflation so contributions are less than projections.
2) (don't have a link for this) The bonds that SSA "invested in" were special bonds paying less than open market treasuries. i.e. Congress cheated SSA to use it as a piggy bank.
EDIT: Whoops. 0.5% is to make Medicare part B 100% instead of 80%
2.0% is for fixing the SS trust fund. Not trivial but about one years' COLA.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Let's means test the capital gains tax.If you have more than $1M
in assets then you can't take it, and everything is taxed as wages.
Robbing social security and medicare to pay for capitalism
as usual. But don't tell that to Dipshit or the Dems who are hell bent on keeping him in office.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
I'm still trying to
figure this guy out, but it needs to be said that BOR is an advocate of the 2100 Social Security Act, introduced in 2017 by Rep John Larson (D-CT), on which Beto was a co-sponsor. It was re-introduced earlier this year, with a Dem majority House, presumably in its same form and presumably still endorsed by BOR.
In the summary I read, I didn't see anything about raising the recipient age and if there was means testing, I missed it. The Act does call for FICA taxes on incomes above $400k, long overdue. Currently the cap is at $133k, with the gap between those income levels gradually eliminated over time. That's obviously a very important piece of this bill. Also the Act calls for raising the recipient income level before SS taxes kick in; provides added benefits for very poor wage earner recipients to make a floor of 125% of the poverty level.
Overall a very progressive bill. Zero Republican co-sponsors of course.
Beto would do well to emphasize his support for this 2100 Act, and not repeat his RepublicanLite social security trimming rhetoric of 7 yrs ago.
& as I learned in Michael Brown's class --
at UCSC in the 1980s, the first step to destroying a program is to means-test it. When it's available to everyone, then everyone has an interest in its preservation.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
A flat tax for Social Security
Instead of having a cutoff for Social Security taxation, tax everyone the same rate, to include millionaires and billionaires. Conservatives like to watch back away from their own ideas, let them pay the same tax rat as a mine worker or field hand. And as for the argument that they'll never get their money back, social security doesn't guarantee your lifespan. And people who live in working class jobs don't live as the rich.
Beto aside, in 2018, Dem Yarmuth said, "Ultimately, we are going
to have to "deal with" programs like Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security, and, ah, it's one of those things that's going to have to be done on a bipartisan basis, because "nobody wants to walk the plank on those."
Not sure anything's changed since O's 6-year long quest "to strike a so-called Grand Bargain--which means, slashing Social Security and Medicare."
[Edited: Added "House Budget Committee"]
Mollie
I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.
~~Gilda Radner, Comedienne
[Per House Dem Budget Committee Chairman on 13 Dec 18, keep an eye on the Dem-Lead House Budget Committee's efforts to strike a so-called "Grand Bargain" with Republicans.]
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.