As expected you didn’t answer the question.

yeah and why are the few million upper middle class people (who slaved away for 10 years getting the qualifications to earn an upper middle class income) expected to fund the retirement of people who can’t or won’t take care of their own retirement. SS is an important system which saves people from destitution, but telling a big group they can’t participate in the end because they have too much already?

There are about a thousand Americans who live like absolute gods while avoiding any kind of tax using an army of accountants to shield themselves from having to contribute. Guy should be directing his ire at them not us modern day kulaks who expect to receive a benefit they’ve funded their whole life, despite maybe having a little extra money saved on the side.

Did all of the people that you sold policies to collect on them?

SS is a safety net. Do you guys think that you should be entitled to food stamps?

Means testing is going to happen. The angry masses are more important to the politicians than the few wealthy people.

Could you please address the specific points made? Literally, quote the posts made against your point and argue the specific words of those posts. That would be much more productive for you.

Close, but not quite. A safety net is included as part of the social security system. No one is arguing against the safety net, we all had that net under us while working. It's the amount paid over and above the cost of the net that we want returned in retirement.

We already have means testing. If you are collecting SS AND have earned income above a threshold, your SS benefits are reduced.

*I was never promised food stamps in exchange for 12.4% of my wages.

This isn't a topic that you can do a line-for-line debate on. It comes down to values which is of course very subjective.

no doubt joe also believes any mil pension would go away if one retires with $5 mil+. after all, you don’t need it and the poor people do. why is this any different, joe?

No, it's not a safety net, in the retirement sense. SS disability is a safety net. Welfare is a safety net. SS retirement is a mandatory collective retirement system that we ALL paid into, speficically 6.2% of my income up to $184,500 of earnings.

So, what you are saying is that I should pay $11,439 so others can benefit, but not me? (Not to mention the $11439 the company will also contribute - Self employed get the privilege of contributing BOTH halves of that.)

If only Bush's proposal to partially privatize SS had been implemented, we wouldn't even be having this discussion, as SS would be fully solvent. But, here we are.

I will have paid multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars into SS over 50 years of working. Sorry, I fully expect to get something meaningful back on that, not just 'donate it to the cause'.

You're going to be way more specific on the trip coverage thing. Most other outfits have trip coverage that would be completely unacceptable here.