January 15, 2012
In an article on the richest one percent of families in the country, the NYT told readers that:
“they may prefer facing cuts to their own benefits like Social Security than paying more taxes.”
The average income among the richest one percent is roughly $1.5 million. The maximum Social Security benefit for a retired couple is around $45,000. If we assume that the everyone in the one percent gets the maximum benefit (which would certainly be an overstatement of their benefits), then completely eliminating their Social Security would be equivalent to a 3 percentage point increase in their tax.
For families with higher incomes in the one percent, the potential loss due to a reduction in Social Security benefits would be an even smaller share of their income. For this reason, it is understandable that they would prefer to go the route of reduction in benefits to tax increases.
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