When I was paying into Social Security, nobody means-tested me to see how poor I was. However, rich folks had a cut off, above a certain income, there was no SS witholding. Social Security witholding should be a graduated tax, one that increases with income, as should Medicare. I do NOt believe in flat taxes and I don't believe in sales taxes. The necessities of life, food, energy, housing, cost the rich the same as the poor, but it is a tiny fraction of the rich man's income. It devastates the poor man's income. And taxes on investment income should be the same as taxes on wages. Most people don't have spare income to "invest", and they don't get to write off their losses on their tax returns, either. They live from paycheck to paycheck.

Perhaps some sort of formula could be implemented where a certain modest retirement income could be guaranteed, pension + other income + contribution matching, but I do believe SS is like education. I think people should be taxed for schools even if they don't have kids. Its for the good of the nation. Likewise, old people built the country young people have inherited, they deserve a little dignity and relief before they die. It's good for the nation. Conservatives seem to think they are doing us a favor, they call it an "entitlement". But its all a moot point anyway, The GOP WANTS the system to go broke so they'll have an excuse to blame the Democrats and quit paying taxes to support it. Remember, the last SS reform was under Reagan, he postponed the crisis for 50 years without breaking the economy. Its not that hard and its not that expensive, IF...you don't wait until the last minute to do it.

There is a lot of things we could do. Raise the retirement age, tax the rich more, (they can afford it), eliminate the income cut-off, means testing, increase the witholding tax, allow matching contributions to SS from our income (like an automatic 401k). After all, as people retire, they automatically open up job opportunities for young people. Its good for the country. But the GOP has resisted every effort to reform the system. What they want to do is to privatize it so they can run a for-profit stock scam, or give it to the banks to "invest" the money in some privately owned fund so they can plunder it with impunity.