Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
I agree. One way to improve the system would be to eliminate the spouse benefit. There are thousands, (or millions?) of people receiving a spouse benefit who never paid anything into the system. And, a spouse who was married for more than 10 years and then gets divorced can receive the spouse benefit without ever contributing to the system. In fact, a worker who has been married and divorced several times will create a spouse benefit for every one of his/her ex-spouses, as long as the marriage lasted 10 years.
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That could(?) start a firestorm! It is very anti-women. 60 years ago very few women worked outside the home (where they worked hard) - often they decided or were compelled to have many children because infant mortality was high - divorced women earned scorn and social stigma in most cases. Maybe not the moneyed upper class? Women earned far less than men for the same job (if a woman could even get the job). WW2 started to change that, but only slowly. About 1970 the unions started providing jobs of equal pay for women. Today women earn 75 cents compared to a dollar for a man in equal jobs.