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For most Americans retirement with Social Security is a necessity. Today corporations and small companies like to dump their senior employees because they have accumulated too much vacation, sick time, etc., their pay is too high, or the medical insurance companies double and triple their rates on older employees. Like it or not most Americans find they have no choice but to retire and collect SS. BTW, the least won lawsuit is for age discrimination. What would the OP suggest these people do?
I always enjoy those posts from people who are irate about paying SS. I am sure when it becomes their time to collect they will turn it down.
Then we have the issue of the $117,000 cap on SS collections. With all the millionaires and billionaires that is a huge loss of revenue. Secondly as reported on the Nightly News most of the wealthy also collect SS of somewhere around $2500 a month. They don't need it to live so for many of the rich the SS money pays for their yachts while the average SS payment is about $1000 a month. While some think SS recipients are living the life of Riley most are deciding between food and medications.
Blaming corporations is an excuse. The fundamental fact remains that the underlying issues of longer life & lower fertility rates make SS inherently unsustainable.
The supposed issue of $117,000 cap is just pandering to keep an inherently unsustainable ponzi scheme going. Why did they ever give a cap at that number? Because originally it wasn't intended to hook everyone for all of their money. Now that the ponzi scheme is coming under pressure we have the familiar "we need more and more" excuse.
Young people like myself should be able to opt-out of SS, or change the plan completely to some sort of defined contribution. That way when it comes time to get paid, they haven't been hooked and live with the expectation of benefits until death. As people opt-out, it will be obvious that someone will be stuck holding the bag. But that is the end result of all ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff couldn't make all of his depositors whole again. Neither will successive generations be able to be made whole from the amount of money they will deposit to ensure their parents. How did it work out in Greece when they went broke? All of that bleeding heart stuff didn't stop them from nearly declaring bankruptcy and cutting benefits anyway. At the end of the day they have to now suffer ridicule for doing exactly what you are saying that we should emulate.
The gov. needs to stop over-promising SS benefits. As Warren Buffett says, "You don't know who is swimming naked until the tide comes out."
All societies, especially advanced ones should end social security. At the very least, they should completely change the way that it operates so that it is not a ponzi scheme. Currently social security works in most countries by having the working (the kids) pay for the retired adults (parents). It is obvious that the only way for this to be sustainable is for the working class to be large enough to carry the weight of their parents.
Here is the point in an advanced society, people have less children. Less children make it harder for them to bear the weight of the parents. This is why nearly every advanced society is having problems with social security. Japan is in the midst right now as they have so many elderly. The Europeans and here in the US we are having problems.
The only ways to solve this are:
1. People have more kids
I don't have a problem with this, it is just not the tendency for societies to have more children. Once birth-control enters the picture, people have less kids.
2. Import people
This is really not a solution but a band-aid. Sure they can help shoulder the burden, but who then will pay for them. We only kick the can down the road.
3. End/change it permanently
We can end it. Some people may not like that politically. However if they do not end it completely, they will have to change the way that it operates. Instead of simply giving the money from children to adults, they will have to actually save the money into a trust fund. Then when the person gets older, they get their contribution back + interest. This is very much the same as a private pension plan. However the benefits cannot be given out for multiple decades. Otherwise, the cost of supporting people for so long balloons and makes it unsustainable.
The life expectancy is going up and birth rates are going down, it's obvious that we cannot keep our current system.
Contact your senators and congressman with your solution.
All societies, especially advanced ones should end social security. At the very least, they should completely change the way that it operates so that it is not a ponzi scheme. Currently social security works in most countries by having the working (the kids) pay for the retired adults (parents). It is obvious that the only way for this to be sustainable is for the working class to be large enough to carry the weight of their parents.
Here is the point in an advanced society, people have less children. Less children make it harder for them to bear the weight of the parents. This is why nearly every advanced society is having problems with social security. Japan is in the midst right now as they have so many elderly. The Europeans and here in the US we are having problems.
The only ways to solve this are:
1. People have more kids
I don't have a problem with this, it is just not the tendency for societies to have more children. Once birth-control enters the picture, people have less kids.
2. Import people
This is really not a solution but a band-aid. Sure they can help shoulder the burden, but who then will pay for them. We only kick the can down the road.
3. End/change it permanently
We can end it. Some people may not like that politically. However if they do not end it completely, they will have to change the way that it operates. Instead of simply giving the money from children to adults, they will have to actually save the money into a trust fund. Then when the person gets older, they get their contribution back + interest. This is very much the same as a private pension plan. However the benefits cannot be given out for multiple decades. Otherwise, the cost of supporting people for so long balloons and makes it unsustainable.
The life expectancy is going up and birth rates are going down, it's obvious that we cannot keep our current system.
With the huge increase in morbidly obese people, and others having serious health issues as well like diabetes who may not fall into the category of the morbidly obese, it only makes sense that life expectancy will decrease in the near future.
Social Security is not a ponzi scheme as others have said, it's just been raided by our elected leaders for various other reasons, and has been mismanaged. Social Security is easily fixed compared to Medicare and the cost of defense (thanks to the fleecing of the taxpayer by the medical industry and the defense industry).
The cap has to be lifted on taxable income. That's 66% of the expected shortfall according to this simulator VOP.org Social Security Simulation - PUBLIC VERSION. That's pretty much in line with other simulators for fixing SS. This one is provided by Voice of the People which gathers opinions collected from citizens that are then passed onto lawmakers.
Another large chunk of the expected shortfall will be made up through small increases in the Social Security tax, one proposal is .05% annually for eight years.
What makes sense to me is to do away with all personal and business tax deductions and credits, lower tax rates, and at the same time slightly increase Social Security taxes at once rather than over eight years, and the change would hardly be noticeable. Workers would actually receive more in take home pay, they just wouldn't receive a large tax refund. Some people I know look forward to those tax refunds, but I'd rather have the higher take home pay, not to mention as a single person w/o kids I don't receive much of a tax refund and half the time end up having to pay a little in April.
A huge problem I see with Social Security is that the age for full retirement was raised. Used to be 65 and is going up to either 67 or 68 once it hits the set level it was changed to back in 1983 by Republicans for the future. Of course they didn't want to affect retirees at the time or their children because they needed their votes, and they knew young people didn't vote in large percentages so they were fair game.
Raising full retirement higher to 67 or 68 is a bad idea for multiple reasons. Many companies get rid of older workers so they can hire younger workers at lower wages (good luck finding another job at that age). Workers in their mid-60's often have health issues that prevent them from working or at least working as productively as their bosses want them to. And lets not forget one of the reasons SS was enacted. It wasn't only to help keep the elderly out of poverty, which it has helped do by the way, but it was also to allow elderly workers to retire so younger unemployed workers could fill those positions.
Partisan attacks railing on and on against Social Security have always amazed me considering all the good it has done and will continue to do. But those attacks don't surprise me, and they fuel my resentment of the Republican party enough that even though I've voted for their candidates for President every time but one, I can't do so again unless their candidate supports properly repairing Social Security, not advocating for a hatchet job the way Paul Ryan and many Republicans have. And Ryan wonders why he and Romney lost to Barry. What a joke. Romney made a mistake naming him as his VP candidate.
There is nothing wrong with social security except the government couldn't keep their hands out of it and they give it to people who didn't pay into it. Pay into it and get it when you retire, simple.
By law, since inception, surpluses were required to be invested in treasuries, both marketable and unmarketable special purpose bonds. Over time, these investments began to favor the unmarketable special purpose bonds.
Greenspan was the architect of Social Security reform in 1983/84 and sold it as the only way to ensure the ability to make payments 30 years into the future. Reform also included raising the retirement age, relaxing eligibility criteria for SSDI, increasing Payroll taxes, limiting investments of surpluses into the unmarketable treasuries and taking SS off the unified budget.
No coincidence, it also created an incremental $2.7 Trillion surplus available for government spending.
Fast forward to the campaign promise of Bush 2 to reform SS. Other matters distracted the admin during Bush's first term. He again campaigned on the promise of reform and introduced the plan immediately after being reelected. Reform included:
Eventually enabling workers to invest up to one- third of their balance into one of several funds the government would establish. This was projected to accelerate exhaustion of surpluses and would require government to borrow to pay benefits.
Limited the benefits for wealthy/ high income earners.
Indexed benefits to prices instead of wages.
Increased penalties for early withdrawal.
Bush was unable to obtain adequate support from Congress including his own party that held the majority.
Last edited by middle-aged mom; 10-21-2015 at 05:32 PM..
This is one of my biggest gripes. Young people who are just starting out in life trying to raise a family, buy a home, etc. are forced to subsidize people who spend their day golfing and gambling and have had a whole lifetime to save for their retirement.
To those who say Social Security is funded for decades, this is not true. Costs with exceed revenue in 2021, that's six years!
No different than the generations before them.
Most eventually mature enough to comprehend it's insurance and in the event of their own or a dependent's disability or age it will benefit them, too.
Bush was unable to obtain adequate support from Congress including his own party that held the majority.
Everything that George W Bush ever said about Social Security was a lie. So is almost all of the criticism of it posted in this thread. There is honest information out there about what the system is, how it works, and why we might want to think about shoring it up for future generations. So why do people choose to read and believe the worst sorts of putrid nonsense instead?
Just a small but gowing part of the problem is those that collect social security having never paid in a penny.
Some will say I am wrong in saying that but I am absolutely correct.
They are called " never earners", people, people who have not accumulated at least 40 quarters of earnings. The SSA estimates about 4% of people 62 or older will never recieve benefits.
About half immigrated to the US late in life as a part of some sort of family reunification thing.
The rest either never worked, did not work enough or were paid cash.
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