{"id":403543,"date":"2026-07-18T14:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T14:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/403543\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T14:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T14:51:14","slug":"there-is-a-better-alternative-to-save-social-security-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/403543\/","title":{"rendered":"There is a better alternative to save Social Security \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 Union-Tribune\u2019s editorial proposing means testing Social Security ignores the fact that benefits are already calculated on a progressive basis. While all wage earners pay a fixed percentage (12.4%) of their income up to the cap of $184,500, the percentage of average monthly income that Social Security will replace is not uniform:<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 90% of the first $1,286 of your inflation-adjusted average monthly earnings.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 32% of your inflation-adjusted average monthly earnings between $1,286 and $7,749.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 15% of your inflation-adjusted average monthly earnings exceeding $7,749.<\/p>\n<p>So higher earners already get less of a return on their contributions than lower earners.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The better way to fix Social Security is to raise the contribution cap.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Penn Pfautz, Sorrento Valley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re \u201cA path to fixing Social Security\u201d (July 12): The Union-Tribune\u2019s editorial proposing means testing Social Security ignores&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1564,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-403543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}