They Are Going After Spousal Social Security Payments

File under: Evil bastards

Jeffrey B. Miller, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Delaware, writes in an essay today at MarketWatch, a Rupert Murdoch controlled company:

Social Security spousal benefits have been part of the benefit structure since 1939, a time before Rosie the Riveter, the women's movement, and the decline in average wages which forced women into the workforce.

It is time to question the fairness and usefulness of the spousal benefit in the context of today's realities...

Eliminating the spousal benefit would save more money [and] would make the system fairer, and it would restore some of the redistributive aspects of the benefit structure.

The government really shouldn't be in the retirement business at all, but this just goes to show you what happens when the government gets involved. You are coerced into the Social Security system and once you are in, they want to change the structure of the payouts.

  -RW