Once your retirement income is above that floor, there is no good reason to force taxpayers to pay more for higher benefits, especially because Social Security pays such poor, below market returns on tax payments into the program, actually negative real returns for higher income workers.
The sharp deterioration in the job market during the downturn also seems to have affected applications to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which rose to 2.94 million last year, up from 2.19 million in 2007.