Kevin Drum quotes an article reporting that income rates are more volatile for lower income levels than for higher ones. That doesn't seem very surprising, actually.

But near the end of the post Drum says:

This problem is not likely to improve any time soon, given the modern Republican obsession with either dismembering our traditional safety net programs or else piling ever more individual risk onto them — as they're trying to do with Social Security, for example.

Repeat after me: Social Security is not a "safety net program".

If it were, it would be needs-tested. But it's not. I was able to find stats on the income levels of people who receive disability, but not overall SS recipients.

Can anyone out there point me to statistics showing a breakdown of income levels for general Social Security recipients? My general impression is that less than half of the people receiving Social Security actually need it.