Social security cuts coming?

Social security cuts coming?  Well, of course they are.  This writer is surprised to see them, which can only mean that she hasn't been paying attention for, oh, 25 years or so.  She also seems to assume that the cuts will be proportional to the underfunding, so that 30% underfunding means she's going to get 30% less.  I don't think that's likely to be what happens at all.  Instead, my bet would be that Congress comes down on the side of means-testing Social Security – so that the people with the most assets in retirement receive no payments at all, and the people with the least assets get the most. 

This is how most of the wealth-redistribution programs get started.  To couch them in socialist terms wouldn't go over so well, but to state them as “take from the rich, give to the poor” works much better.  In this case, the people being penalized (those with more assets in retirement) are also exactly the same people who likely contributed the most during their working life to social security.  So the ones who paid in the most will get the least back out.  I'd have been far better off just putting that money under the mattress than what's likely to happen.  I expect to receive zero social security, despite having paid over a quarter million dollars in social security taxes over my career (and my employers paid in the same amount!).  Lovely.  Just lovely.