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Raising the FRA would not do as good as raising early withdrawal age. Change it from 62 to 63 would make an enormous difference.
Changing the early withdrawal age to 63 would not make any noticeable difference. If everybody had to wait an extra year, then yes a few of them will croak before they collect anything, but most will live on and collect a bigger benefit for years or decades. It's more or less a wash in the aggregate, and as I mentioned before it may well be a small negative since the average life expectancy has increased since the current benefit rules were put in place.
Sure, I understand that but of the alternatives I would probably have found it the least problematic. Compared to raising the retirement age, capping benefits based on other income etc.
Looking at the 2015 average SS benefit numbers it is clear those not getting close to or near the max are likely in deep financial trouble unless they have savings/assets/investments.
At the average monthly benefit of $1,331 cannot think of many places in the USA persons can live on just that alone.
Social Security is meant to replace a portion of earned wages. If you couldn't live on what you earned while working SS alone isn't going to be any better. However those are problems that should not be addressed via the SS system. Rather it is what welfare and other government programs are meant to cover. Income based housing, food stamps, rental assistance, etc... those sort of things.
True; I get frustrated sometimes. The facts of which I speak are how badly skewed income and wealth are with a handful of families at the top raking in more than the bottom half of the population combined. The math is that the skew of taxation is that with the money flowing that way the only way to get enough into the system is to divert a bigger piece of that flow.
Here is an opinion that sums up where things stand - I think the median discretionary income (without any assistance factored in) in the US is near zero right now. I am sure it is at or below zero in several states.
Do you realize the value of help that the poor get all through their lives. And when they are old, they'll be taken care of while the middle class will not qualify for that help. This needs to stop.
You have a serious case of envy. People work to get where they are, they also give up though out their lives to give to the poor and are still smart with their money so they can take care of themselves when they can no longer work and people like you want to redistribute what they worked hard for.
But I read it here all the time : "We've been retired for 10 years, since we were 56, and are doing just fine on $30k a year, and we only have $100k saved, but our $150k house is paid off, so you all that say you need a million dollars are crazy." Meanwhile, real inflation and healthcare costs or a health catastrophe can add them to the retired poor in an instant. IF you have a real family unit that can easily afford to care for you with your small income & where you truly don't ever have to worry about your last years, then I agree, you don't need anywhere near as much, and you planned well and successfully.
Most people I know don't have that fourth leg as a basis. I sure don't.
That's my point. We will not qualify for government help for healthcare outside of medicare so we will have to pay for that help and if we are home we will have to pay for home health care yet the poor will get all kinds of help. I MUST save everything I can to save for my elderly years and it infuriates me that people think because we are responsible we should give money away yet they don't know our situation. I will not have a family unit to take care of me and besides, they need to be saving too and not spending their money to take care of me.
Actually, RTB is finacially just fine, based on his posts, he just is more left liberal about wealth distribution of the über rich because he believes they have a stranglehold on the bulk of wealth and need to pay more in taxes for it. Or something like that.
Social Security’s main program, which has become known by the name of the original bill, was old-age insurance. It was meant to ensure that old age wasn’t synonymous with poverty. The Social Security Act of 1935, which created this and other key programs, was groundbreaking: It is the most comprehensive and influential social program the country has ever enacted.
But it was implemented with enormous loopholes. To gain the votes of Southern Democrats [today's Southern Republicans] who wanted to protect the Jim Crow structures of the South, agricultural and domestic workers were cut out. Given that more than 60 percent of the black labor force in the 1930s could be found in these jobs — including nearly 85 percent of black women — about two-thirds of all black people were denied, as Ira Katznelson writes in his book “When Affirmative Action Was White.” Those exclusions stood until the mid-1950s.
Women, who made up more than 90 percent of domestic workers at the time, were also cut out by the exclusion of “casual” or temporary workers. And these were the very workers who were making such low wages that saving for retirement was virtually impossible.
Actually, RTB is finacially just fine, based on his posts, he just is more left liberal about wealth distribution of the über rich because he believes they have a stranglehold on the bulk of wealth and need to pay more in taxes for it. Or something like that.
Yes and Petch knows this; we have sparred before.
NOTE - That one is a little over the top. My view is not quite that extreme, but there is some truth to it.
Last edited by ReachTheBeach; 05-18-2016 at 12:26 AM..
Over the top to say the least. WARNING: off topic soap box rant!!!
The maintenance of wealth has been this way through out history. Believing something should be a certain way or is "fair" just because that "seems right", is an ignorant pipe dream. By far the main reason for poverty is lack of education of the poor masses, either because they are incapable of the comprehension required to be educated or lack of opportunity. Lots of things irk me, but the plain fact that many, if not most, of the problems with economic success of the "down trodden" is their own self perpetuating doing because of a lack of desire to raise themselves out of it. You don't see any mass hysteria from the educated poor, working to better themselves, or the educated middle class, looting and rioting, or forming gangs, etc when something doesn't go the way they think it should. It is such an old cliche to read about nouveau wealthy people from poor origins (athletes, musicians, actors, lottery winners, etc, etc) constantly losing and blowing and abusing wealth that comes their way, because despite their high paying talent, or even genius creativity, they basically, are still stupid, and blow through millions and end up penniless and often dead at a young age. You simply can't turn a stupid person in to a lawyer, or doctor, or engineer by forcing education down their throat and giving them handouts to "provide the equality that would be fair". Ambitious and intelligent people, yearn for an education and have an internal desire to be happy and successful, which doesn't always mean rich, by any means. Plenty of successful people with wonderful families and good homes, that are not even middle class. And conversely, there are plenty of stupid middle and upper class, that even though they maintain a decent job, STILL can't make ends meet and refuse to see that they can't spend the way they do and provide any long term security even when it is spelled out for them and shown it in plain black and white. They refuse to make the right decision because it is harder to do now, and prefer to pretend the future will work itself out. I read it here, and I see it every single day even in my own immediate family. The more you give people like that, the less they even try. All they do is spend more to satisfy the now, and get awash in debt until something happens to break the camels back and it all collapses around them. Then the inevitable cries of "It's not fair...why did this happen to me?...someone help me!!,....I shouldn't have to live like this now!!" My mother drilled in to my head from a young age: Life is not fair, never was, never will be. Make your own luck and opportunities.
Rant off.
Last edited by Perryinva; 05-18-2016 at 06:07 AM..
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