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Why should I pay more? I'm already "contributing" the max, to a program that you say should be cutting me off. On top of that, I have to do my own savings, because I cannot rely on this broken, bankrupt, doomed program. I should just pay and pay and pay, and me and my family... eff us?
Great plan...
Presently you get more benefits the more you pay in and get rewarded for working longer, which sounds fair. Means testing would lose political support among high earners, who vote in larger numbers. Maybe that's the point.
Presently you get more benefits the more you pay in and get rewarded for working longer, which sounds fair. Means testing would lose political support among high earners, who vote in larger numbers. Maybe that's the point.
You do get more the more you pay in but the increase isn’t at the same rate as the increase in tax dollars paid in
Presently you get more benefits the more you pay in and get rewarded for working longer, which sounds fair. Means testing would lose political support among high earners, who vote in larger numbers. Maybe that's the point.
there is a point of diminishing return the more you earn . per fica dollar paid in lower income earners get 6x the benefit in payments compared to high income earners .
According to the most recent Trustees Report, for instance, the first $767 of “average indexed monthly earnings” (a complex formula that adjusts earnings over time) is credited at a 90 percent rate, assuring the lowest wage workers of a retirement benefit nearly equal to their earned wage.
Wages of more than $767 a month but less than $4,624 a month are credited at a 32 percent rate. This means retirement benefits increase at a much lower rate. The benefit pinching, however, does not end there.
More means less
For wages of more than $4,624 a month up to the wage base maximum ($113,700 for 2013), the crediting rate is only 15 percent. Thus, all the wages earned — and employment taxes paid — over that $55,488-a-year “bend point” gain benefits at only one-sixth the rate of the lowest wage earners.
In effect, the Social Security benefits formula functions as a sharply graduated benefits “tax,” reducing the benefits that accrue to higher wages by 85 percent. The higher your means, the lower your benefit.
Now you're just being ridiculous. But fine, then cut back on their benefits. Many of those high earners say they don't need the check the gummint sends them every month. Instead of cutting them off completely, the gummint could cut back on their benefits.
Your combined posts indicate your point of view is that Social Security is a needs-based general welfare program. It is not.
Presently you get more benefits the more you pay in and get rewarded for working longer, which sounds fair. Means testing would lose political support among high earners, who vote in larger numbers. Maybe that's the point.
Social Security benefits are already means tested, and have been for a very long time.
Many years ago, when I was 22, my first job out of grad school was for a name-brand high-brow consulting company. The consulting company had been hired to teach members of Congress & their key staffers about these newfangled things called "Personal Computers." Anyone remember CP-M and UCSD-p? Half the battle was to figure out a way to make it something Congressional Staffers and the odd Congressman actually cared about. At that time, most of them thought a PC was as relevant to their jobs as a new brand of typewriter.
So we hatched a plan to create PC software that modeled the Social Security system. We had students enter key pieces of macro information about the state of the SS system together with all of the various conditions affecting it, and then Poof! The PC printed out pretty graphs and charts that showed year-by-year the revenue and outflows of the SS system. Then, surprise surprise surprise the Social Security system would run out of money at some point in the future.
The reaction? Shock! Horror! Disbelief!
So then the next thing in the class was we provided the students the ability to adjust the usual parameters including retirement age, COLA assumptions, contribution rates, increased means-testing of benefits, immigration rates, birth rates, life expectancies, etc along with pretty much everything else suggested in this thread. There were other issues that have since gone by the wayside such as the dealing with the "notch babies."
Then the computer printed out brand new pretty graphs and charts that showed year-by-year the revenue and outflows of the SS system, and surprise surprise surprise the system still would run out of money at some point in the future (but at least it was farther in the future).
The reaction to the SS system after the students made the adjustments? More Shock, Horror & Disbelief.
So what was the final outcome? Nothing really. The Congressional Staffers (and few elected representatives) learned a bit about computers, and they learned the Social Security System at some point would run out of money, but of course no one did anything about it.
I’m wondering just how far this flawed program will go before it is recognized for the failure and destroyer of wealth it really is. The best fix will always be to get it out of the hands of the government and into the hands of the private sector where the people own their accounts and they are invested in the means of production.
In effect, the Social Security benefits formula functions as a sharply graduated benefits “tax,” reducing the benefits that accrue to higher wages by 85 percent. The higher your means, the lower your benefit.
thats why its called Social..it is socialized security..to each according to his ability..to each according to his needs
worst idea you can have . making a program that is based on being the back stop when all else fails a private investment game .
if its supposed to be the back stop when all else fails then they should probably adjust it to be that. my preference would be to scrap it and roll it into a welfare program. but thats not going to work unless you get payouts to people who paid into the system (unless it is done on a do or die emergency basis).
so you force all 401k and 401k like programs to convert to ROTH type programs, then you use that revenue to buy out people's social security benefits and then you shutter social security and roll potential recipients into public assistance as needed.
easy peasy
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But fine, then cut back on their benefits. Many of those high earners say they don't need the check the gummint sends them every month. Instead of cutting them off completely, the gummint could cut back on their benefits.
