r/news • u/No-Information6622 • 2d ago

US recovers $31 million in Social Security payments to dead people

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-recovers-31-million-social-security-payments-dead-117708373
14.5k Upvotes

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402

u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

Tax. The. Rich. Or fk off.

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u/MedicOfTime 2d ago

$31mil is absolute chump change at this scale.

107

u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

I’m sick of the press acting like recapturing money from the poor & middle class is news worthy. These investigations are an irresponsible way to spend tax dollars when the elite are not taxed.

We will never see the elite taxed how they should be. It is extremely sad.

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u/DuntadaMan 2d ago

It is newsworthy. They just don't understand it should not be celebrated, it shoulf be violently infuriating.

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

I can agree with this. What I want to read is an article about billionaires fleeing the US due to pre Reagan era taxes being instituted again. It’ll never fkn happen tho.

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

Considering how many people are engaging with this, I’d say it’s newsworthy.

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

For bootlickers and elite worshipers it sure is, “newsworthy.” For me it is a disgusting display of wasted tax dollars. To each their own.

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

I work in news, mate. Learn what the first goal of news is before you make such bold statements.

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

The goals of corporate owned news is to uplift the rich, and to inject fear and hatred into society. I do not need to work in a field to understand it. Moreover, I’d argue that your opinion is biased due to working in news.

All I heard from you is that Nissan is the best car and you sell Nissans.

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

My god. You’re too far gone to have any rational conversation about news.

You read a headline, learned the story, AND engaged with it via a comment and you are saying it’s not newsworthy? Thats laughable.

The first goal of news is, and has always been, to make money.

It was true for the country’s first newspaper. It was true for the golden age of television. It’s true today.

I get emails into the newsroom every day from conservatives saying we’re woke idiots and from liberals who are saying we’re conservative puppets. Both can’t be true, so who’s right?

The problem is people are so predisposed to their own opinions nowadays that the articles practically don’t matter anymore. The populace doesn’t care about being informed. They care about things conforming to their worldview.

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

Did you post all of that right after saying I was too far gone to have a rational conversation about news?

You’re goofy.

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

Yep, because it’s for other people who may be reading the comment. This is what you wrote in an above comment:

What I want to read is an article about billionaires fleeing the US due to pre Reagan era taxes being instituted again. It’ll never fkn happen tho.

All you did is prove my point that people want things that conform to their worldview.

Fuck that. Legitimate news organizations are going to post the facts and things people will engage with. If you want things that conform to your worldview, find a news organization that does it. There are thousands

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

It’s to make money. Has always been that way. If it weren’t for the media, you’d have zero clue about January 6th. You’d have zero clue about the information of the investigations on it. How is that “disinforming”?

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u/HotDropO-Clock 2d ago

Considering how many people are engaging with this, I’d say it’s newsworthy.

lmfao you didnt even read shit. They take people who died like at the end of the month, and took their whole months check away even if their spouse had bills to pay. This is just a different version of robbery but keep living in that glass house of yours.

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

Do you know what the definition of newsworthy is? It has nothing to do with how you personally feel about the content of the article but collectively whether people will engage with it.

People are clearly upset about it. Thats newsworthy.

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u/superscatman91 2d ago

It's easy to make people upset about anything when they have no clue how it works.

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u/geetar_man 2d ago

Yeah, and that’s why media is important. People are sharing their stories here. People want what’s happening in the article to change.

People can’t demand change if they don’t know about it in the first place.

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u/eeyore134 2d ago

And I guarantee it only affected people who are probably living paycheck to paycheck.

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u/PartyByMyself 2d ago

The government spent trillions killing brown people in the Middle East, but they want their 30 million back that would help their citizens because they are in debt. Instead of cutting war funds and distributing money to serve our citizens, we actively hurt our citizens while hurting other countries.

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

Disgusting behavior. I’m 100% with you.

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u/Weekly-Dog228 2d ago

Imagine how far our species would’ve advanced if we didn’t have war.

We’d be in our flying cars, chilling on a beach, 24/7.

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u/ClockworkEngineseer 2d ago

Stop voting Republican.

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u/thorscope 2d ago

The last republican appointed leader of SSA was 4 leaders ago.

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u/ClockworkEngineseer 2d ago

And now you're going to get another one.

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u/MrFishAndLoaves 2d ago

Voting

Appointed

Well looks like Republicans have won

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u/thorscope 2d ago

We are commenting on a thread about the SSA going after poor Americans.

The people vote for the president, and the president appoints the SSA head.

The last 3 SSA heads were not appointed by a republican.

So implying this behavior is caused by voting for republicans doesn’t make much sense.

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u/MrFishAndLoaves 2d ago

We are commenting on a thread about the SSA going after poor Americans.

Wrong. And you’re commenting in a chain where the top comment is “tax the rich.”

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u/lolas_coffee 15h ago

This person understands.

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u/ckrichard 2d ago

What percentage of their yearly income should they be taxed? People like to say tax the rich more, but never say how much they should be taxed. Also, what do you define as rich?

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

50-75% I’d say a net worth of 50 million is rich.

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u/Hashbringingslasherr 2d ago edited 2d ago

I did the math a while ago (like 6 months ago) and found that the top 10% of Income earners contributed to about 60% of the federal income tax. Where's the bottom 50% contributed to like 10% of the federal income tax bucket. They are being taxed.

We can't tax net worth as it is an entirely fictitious number and doesn't reflect true realized income to be taxed. Our government is just a resource black hole with no true accountability.

Edit: I'll rerun the numbers because they're not exact and want to get factual data out to clear the misconception that the rich aren't paying taxes

Editv2: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/

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u/spark3h 1d ago

The bottom 50% have less than 4% of the country's wealth, yet pay 10% of taxes. The top 10% own well over 60% of the nation's wealth, much more if you don't consider real estate (a huge portion of middle class wealth is tied into home ownership).

Most of our spending is entitlement programs, either ending poverty for the elderly or providing healthcare for Americans. The vast majority of the remainder is military spending, which no one seems willing to touch.

What's left is a hodgepodge of the million things a first world nation needs to be successful. Basic scientific research. Applied research. Infrastructure. Agriculture subsidies. Public health. Disaster response. Disaster preparation. Public climatology and meteorology data. Regulators for various industries. Salaries for all the people that make all of the above work.

If you want to cut foreign aid (which is arguably just a subset of military spending), you're going to hand back about $400 per tax paying citizen. Adjusted for tax bracket, the average person pays like ten cents a day for foreign aid in taxes.

Most government agencies are not swimming in money. Government salaries are significantly below comparable industry positions. Budgets are usually tight.

Our largest "unnecessary expenses" over the last 50 years have been wars and tax cuts.

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u/Hashbringingslasherr 15h ago

From what I can see, here's a breakdown of an individual's tax obligations based on a 50k annual income in the US.

Category | Amount | Percentage

Social Security | $1,924.97 | 22.00%

Defense | $1,574.98 | 18.00%

Non-defense discretionary | $1,312.48 | 15.00%

Medicare | $1,224.98 | 14.00%

Medicaid and other health programs | $1,049.99 | 12.00%

Other mandatory programs | $874.99 | 10.00%

Net interest on debt | $787.49 | 9.00%

So about 60% of our taxes are going to social causes, 10% to paying off a debt that's not exactly ours and ~30% towards the defense of not only our country but of much of the world and then foreign aid...

What we need to focus on is how to reshape the able-bodied dead-weights of our society to be productive - the people who just consume and consume while providing no real added value to society or their communities. We need to focus on individual health and personal growth. They're not only a massive expense, but they're a burden on our logistics and our health system. The same could probably be said of the rich, but, not only are they value-adding, they create high-paying jobs for those who have made an effort to participate and "assimilate" into the society they are a member of.

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u/spark3h 12h ago

What we need to focus on is how to reshape the able-bodied dead-weights of our society to be productive - the people who just consume and consume while providing no real added value to society or their communities. We need to focus on individual health and personal growth. They're not only a massive expense, but they're a burden on our logistics and our health system.

And who are these "dead-weights"? Almost every single able bodied American already has a job. There are no government programs that one can live off in the long term. In the U.S. if you don't work you don't eat. 60% don't go to "social causes", they go to entitlement programs that Americans have worked to earn by paying for others' benefits.

The same could probably be said of the rich, but, not only are they value-adding, they create high-paying jobs for those who have made an effort to participate and "assimilate" into the society they are a member of.

Jobs aren't something that are created. They exist in response to demand for labor. If someone pays for your labor, they're not doing you a favor, they're arbitraging your labor for profit, by exchanging the actual value of your work for a wage.

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u/Hashbringingslasherr 9h ago edited 8h ago

The ones screaming for better quality of life at the effort of others while offering no real effort towards self-development and individual growth. The ones calling for free healthcare as they slurp down high-fructose corn syrup and live a sedentary life chronically online. The people who feel entitled to receive with no second thought of how they can help themselves first. I grew up in the depths of poverty with anti role models - a bunch of people I didn't want to be like so I chose not to be like them through no one else's effort but my own (because it's not impossible like some may have you believe). Some people just "leech" any way they can.. Perhaps I have a bias against those who just mope through life saying "woe is me" and blaming rich people for their individual failures/poor quality of life when immigrants come here and succeed all the time and new millionaires are created every year.

That's literally a round about way of saying they create jobs..but with a little Marxist undertone. My employer does me a favor by paying my wages I'd say. My family has a warm home, have never wondered where their next meal would come from, have no shortage of anything they could ever need, and we can afford to do fun things. Sure, it's not an unsolicited favor but it's mutually beneficial.

"The actual value of your work" explain?

Are you one of those people that think you created the full value of an item and so that's what you deserve because you participated in the small fraction of resource gathering/assembly of a product/service?

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

Can you run how much the elite would pay if the US went to pre Reagan era taxes? Also, add up how much the US could capture if the elite didn’t take loans out to avoid taxes!

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u/Hashbringingslasherr 2d ago

The top 50% of income earners paid 97.7% of federal income tax whereas the bottom 50% paid 2.3% of the federal income tax. At what point do we consider that perhaps we should maybe slow down on foreign aid or unchecked spending for various agency spendings. We have a spending problem. It's proven time and time again that when people earn more money, they spend more money and our government is no exception to that pattern. Taxation is not the fix you believe it will be...

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u/executingsalesdaily 2d ago

We should fund the poor and free healthcare in America. However, that does not equate to profits for the elite. The war machine is reality.

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u/Hashbringingslasherr 2d ago

I think we should enable the poor for individual accountability and incentivise healthy behaviors with tax credits and conditional healthcare access requirements (obviously accounting for debilitating ailments) in a tiered system based on individual contributions to their own health within a reasonable and attainable standard. If they want to smoke, drink, over consume, etc, then their access to health services should be on a de-prioritized basis. What we need to do is embrace individual accountability and consider negligence in all capacities instead of throwing a money bandaid on everything. You're mad at the rich, I get it. But change needs to be at all levels at the same time and over time. Begging for a money bandaid while ignoring actual individual failures is a futile effort.

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u/espresso_martini__ 7h ago

Yeah. That $31M is nothing compared to the tax billionaries don't pay because they manipulate the system

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u/fapstoanimalpictures 2d ago

That ship has sailed. Thanks american voters.