There are a lot of other options you left out as well:
* Raise the retirement age
* Privatize a portion of the program
* Reduce benefits to a more sustainable level
* Decrease the rate at which benefits increase each year
I don't particularly like the options you laid out as it asks an already strained middle class to pay for benefits to the poor without the recipients making any concessions. But that's why the solution is not so simple.
You're conflating upper class with middle class. People who are making $50k a year after retirement, or making more than $106k a year before retirement, are not middle class. They are upper-middle to upper class, and they have substantially more savings than the people who receive less Social Security benefits.
You can make anything sound politically bad by calling something an attack on the middle class. The thing is, you can define middle class however you want. Are people who make more than $106k a year middle class? They're in the top quintile of incomes. How about people who make more than $250k? They're in the top 2%.
Raising the retirement age will disproportionately hurt anyone who works physical jobs, who are already strained by the decline in construction and manufacturing. Privatizing the program will be a giant subsidy to Wall Street. Decreasing everyone's benefits will hurt the middle class and the lower class, and might take away a little disposable income from the upper class.
Raising the retirement age will disproportionately hurt anyone who works physical jobs, who are already strained by the decline in construction and manufacturing.
Keep the low retirement age only for the declining number of people who work physical jobs. Problem solved.
