{"id":813716,"date":"2026-07-21T05:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T05:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/813716\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T05:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T05:31:12","slug":"changing-the-social-security-formula-breaks-the-american-retirement-promise-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/813716\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the Social Security formula breaks the American retirement promise \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\">Re \u201cA path to fixing Social Security\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/2026\/07\/10\/a-promising-path-to-a-bipartisan-fix-of-social-security-emerges\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">July 12<\/a>): The U-T editorial was correct in noting that several administrations were willing to kick the can down the road, rather than deal with the impending insolvency of the Social Security reserves.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">We could have instituted a revised Social Security formula a few decades ago. However, changing the Social Security formula to a means-testing base, and applying it immediately to all existing Social Security recipients, is a frightening idea. It breaks a promise to all of the hard-working Americans who were continually instructed to design a plan for retirement that included the full Social Security payout.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">If means-testing were to be applied (and I don\u2019t favor it), it should only apply to people who are new contributors to the fund. To apply such a change to the existing insured is not only the breaking of a sacred covenant, it will also demolish the budgets of most middle-income retirees.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Harvey Levine, Rancho Bernardo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cA path to fixing Social Security\u201d (July 12): The U-T editorial was correct in noting that several&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,388662,1721,184,185],"class_list":["post-813716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}