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.
I am not, it’s just that most women today under 35 work, the only ones that don’t are wealthy enough not too.
The rest of couples in America with kids still both work.
A women claiming her spouses SS will eventually convert from the norm, to only wealthy women claiming it. All the non wealthy women worked and paid their own.
Think airline pilot wife vs wife who married cop and was a teacher.
The one with the free lunch is the millionaire, and the one who can’t double dip off their own and their spouse is not wealthy.
It’s just an idea that if someone has to not get paid because their isn’t enough money, it should be the people who A did not pay, and B likely more in the future they are wealthy and that’s why they didn’t pay.