Is talk of increasing the income cap for Social Security a Trojan Horse to destroy it?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I ran into this on one of the blogs I read. It's an interesting thought, was wondering what VJers thought:

Somehow the concept of means testing has entered the Social Security dialogue right along side that of cap increases. Don't let people trick you into going down that path. Each seems on the surface to be a reasonable and progressive step but instead they are being dangled in front of you by people opposed to Social Security to begin with.

The strength of Social Security is precisely in its insurance model. Eliminate the cap without increasing benefits and you move it to a welfare model. Means test it and you do the same thing in any even more exaggerated way. These people simply want to undercut political support for Social Security among the upper middle class by removing their stake in the system.

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2008/07/soc-...-as-trojan.html

[Peikko 1,575]

It is plausible. Thatcher accomplished that neat trick with the National Health Service in GB and it has been suffering the consequences ever since EVEN with having so called 'socialists' in office for the last 12 years!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Thatcher accomplished that neat trick with the National Health Service in GB ...

Details, please.

I can look it up but I'd like to hear your version of it.

[Peikko 1,575]

Thatcher managed to persuade the middle classes that they were buying into a broken system and that they would be better off with a more 'privatized' type system and proceeded to sort of partially privatize the system (outsourcing etc). This in turn caused the not so broken but somewhat old system to become 'broken'. Sort of similar to the disaster of privatizing the national rail network, although they didn't quite succeed in killing the health service, just wound it.

Sorry, I wish I could be more elequent and it's not really that simple - but it nearly is

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Interesting,t hanks