David Matteson: Social Security changes should help lower income Americans

To the Daily Sun,

One of the presidential candidates has proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security, which sounds like a great idea until you dig deeper. Many lower income retirees like my parents don’t pay any income taxes anyway as their income is too low, so this wouldn’t help them at all. The average retired couple receives a combined $2,739 a month and would probably save around $3,500 a year in taxes. For a wealthy couple collecting the maximum of $4,873 a month each it could save them over $20,000 a year. Most of the benefit would go to the wealthy, not lower income Americans who need the money. Wealthy individuals would gain more as their Social Security checks and taxable incomes are bigger and they are likely in a higher tax bracket.

The other downside is that it would hasten the demise of Social Security so either the reduction would have to be done sooner than the current projection of 2035-37 or the cut would have to be deeper than 17-21%. Different websites have different projections but none are encouraging.

If you want to give wealthy retired Americans more money this is a great idea. If you want to help the average retiree this is a horrible idea. They would get more money up front but then face a bigger reduction sooner. Until a bill is passed and signed that fixes Social Security so that all retirees won’t face a 17-21% reduction in benefits in the next 11-13 years, no politician should be promising anything that will make the system even more fragile. Also any changes should help lower income Americans who need the additional income the most not the wealthy.

David Matteson

Meredith