[mapotofu]

I think retirees need to pay the price, finally accept sacrifice, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They can earn $500/month easily working at the many places I see hiring for low skill labor. They aren’t contributing economic value otherwise, and it’s more important that we prepare future generations than to lose even more to the one on the way out.

[toomuchtodo]

The US economy generates ~$5T in profits a year. The bottom sixty percent of Americans have no federal tax liability because of how little they make, although they do pay into Social Security via W2 FICA. Tax the wealthy. Asking the old and frail to work low wage jobs and toil further for $500/month? “The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members.” The median social security benefit is $2k/month.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit...

> Social Security benefits play a vital role in reducing poverty in every state, and they lift more people above the poverty line than any other program in the United States. Without Social Security, 23.5 million more adults and children in the United States (including Puerto Rico) would be below the poverty line, according to our analysis of survey data for 2024 using the official poverty measure (OPM). Although most of those whom Social Security keeps out of poverty are age 65 or older, 6.5 million are under age 65, including 1.1 million children. (See Table 1.) Social Security is particularly important for older women and people of color, who have fewer retirement resources outside of Social Security. Depending on their design, reductions in Social Security benefits could significantly increase poverty, particularly among older adults.