Originally Posted by
CX500T
No, but this would put someone like my cousin (who is late 30s and a widow with 2 kids) basically with worthless SS and all the money her husband paid in (decent paying job, major F/O equivalent) poof, gone, because she spent her 20s and 30s raising kids, like my mom did.
The system is ****ed, but yanking the carpet out from people who PAID in the money because their spouse dared die before age X is BS.
I worked overseas for years. My wife, because I would be gone for months on end, didn't have a high paying job but we sure as hell paid out the max on SS every year for me. She is over 40 now. But if I was like the majority of americans with very little retirement savings, giving her next to nothing based off of her years as a bartender and waitress while we as a family paid out the ass, maxiung out the SS tax every single year except my new hire year at Delta, and she would under a very minor tweak to your proposal, (42 vs 40 as the cutoff) get nothing.
Heck. No.
I paid that bloody money. It's a very crap return and I didn't have a choice, but why the heck should it not be paid out to my family.
Oh, you proposed I pay a tax on the work she did around the house?
GTFO.
In your stories these peoples lives are not concluded, how can you say they would never pay their 40 credits, or 10 years by the time they are 67? If they make it to 67 without a spouse and never paid 40 credits of social security you are leaving a significant amount of info out of the story.
40 was a number because young people have different options available especially working from home, or Uber Eats type jobs, so move it down to 35.
Older generations go with a she shouldn’t have to argument but younger ones will have to go with she can’t. The money is running out, literally.