dobro
SS is a social insurance program, not a retirement program. As with insurance, everybody pays in but not everybody gets the same amount back out. There’s never been a fixed money in/money out component to the plan.
People had a lot different attitudes toward socialism in the 1930s. There were enough folks in favor of exactly that transfer of wealth that the one percenters of that era tried to pull off a military coup of FDRs govt (look up Gen. Smedley Butler). They were very worried about the common folk having any social safety net to mess up their cheap labor situation.
“raising the SS taxable base amount is essentially the same thing as the “means test”
I don’t see that at all. Is it a means test now at 110,000? At what rate does it become a means test? Them that’s got the means should be willing to put up a little more to help those at the bottom. That’s the price of a civilized society.
And, lastly, all taxes are “wealth transfers”. We pay in, govt prioritzes the pay out. Some constituancies get more than others.The only reason it gets complicated is that there are those that are so devoid of compassion, Xtian values (brothers keeper type stuff) and greedy that they can’t stand to see someone have something they don’t have. not because they need it, but because they hate to see someone else have it. Surely you know or have known people like that, right?