partial_accumen , 12 hours ago

If I’m understanding you right, part of what you’re referring to is “means testing”. Means testing is usually defined as : “if a person has a way to obtain income outside of Social Security, they should have their Social Security benefits reduced”.

This is a hypercharged political issue. Even the wealthy pay into Social Security to receive the same level of benefit as everyone else. The suggestion of means testing is, if someone can afford to live without Social Security, should they get it at all? This raises lots of problematic questions. A few I can think of is:

• who decided what income equals “affordable” in my example above?
• is SS benefit reduced by just rental income, or do you go after people with pensions and 401k income?
• is it fair to be forced to pay into a system for your entire working career and not get any benefit out of it at the individual level?
• does means testing reduce the incentive to save for retirement? As in, why save extra if your SS benefits will be reduced to equal what you saved on the side?

So far there’s no legislation that supports means testing for Social Security benefits that have passed that I’m aware of, but I don’t claim to be any kind of expert.