"Why he is doing this, is pretty simple. People love it (even 6 in 10 conservatives). It polls through the roof. And anyone telling you anything different is trying to sell you something, probably private accounts on Wall Street that would have been blown up with the stock market crash in 2008."
And anything you had in the market in 2008 has since rebounded and much much more. I'd much rather have SS partially privatized over the course of my 40 working years then the way it is structured now.
The people that protest privatization don't understand investing at all.
The people that protest privatization don't understand investing at all.
Some politicians keep forgetting the first commandment. "Thou shall not mess with Social Security"! All the old people vote.
This is unfortunate. It is important that we discuss and fix SS but responses like this make me worry that the can just gets kicked down the road until a much more painful solution is applied.
Even more concerning than that is this doesn't even address the far larger elephant in the room: Medicare\Medicaid. If we can't fix the relatively easy to fix SS then how are we going to handle those two?
What do you think we need to do to 'fix' Social Security?
Also, the ACA is an effort to handle Medicare and Medicaid. If you reign in health care cost inflation, the Medicare/Medicaid problem goes away fast.
What do you think we need to do to 'fix' Social Security?
Easy, make it voluntary as it was originally supposed to be.
How would that fix it? Considering it is setup right now pay as you go system?
Yeah about that inflation, medicare D plans are going to reimburse below acquisition costs. That means that eventually even loss leader operations will have to stop and everyone else will be gone. Once you kill the provider field, then what?
Easy, make it voluntary as it was originally supposed to be.
What do you think we need to do to 'fix' Social Security?
Also, the ACA is an effort to handle Medicare and Medicaid. If you reign in health care cost inflation, the Medicare/Medicaid problem goes away fast.
Bullshit. There were plenty of jobs that one could do without having to pay social security. I call that voluntary.
Raise the retirement age to 72. After that, tie the retirement age to average life expectancy. Problem solved. Real fucking simple.
So by that logic it's still voluntary. Work as a waiter and you'll pay almost nothing into social security. Problem solved!
It was never intended to be voluntary. This is a simple fact. Do with that information what you will.
What do you think we need to do to 'fix' Social Security?
Also, the ACA is an effort to handle Medicare and Medicaid. If you reign in health care cost inflation, the Medicare/Medicaid problem goes away fast.
Almost nothing, isn't nothing. Herp derp.
I could have worked for a company that provided a pension back then and not had to worry about Social Security. I could have been making gobs of money doing so and not handicapping my income so as to avoid paying some into SS.
It was intended to give those who didn't have access to a pension/retirement a means to save for those things. It was intended to serve only those people. Do with that information what you will.
This is a terrible idea. Life expectancy has been increasing for wealthy people, not for the poor that Social Security is designed to help. Why would you cut poor people's benefits because rich people are living longer? I thought you were all about helping the poor?
Personally I would prefer a gradual increase in the eligibility date. Something like a 5 year buffer and then increase it 1 year every 3 years before tying it to life expectancy of those who reach 21 years of age. Combine this with a complete removal of the SS cap (taxes and disbursements) and I think this provides a viable really long term proposal that can shift with life expectancy.
Alternatively you could remove the cap and continue to cap disbursements (Last I looked the SSA noted just removing the cap was not enough). I view this as a less attractive option than the first suggestion but it would be better than doing nothing.
Sure its an effort and the increase will hopefully continue at this slower pace but the CBO still projects the costs to increase in relation to GDP over the next 40 years or so. I don't know if the problem goes away fast even if you reign in the overall cost inflation given the widening gap regarding Long Term Care. Costs which are increasing faster than inflation or even healthcare inflation and insurance rates are soaring. With costs rising and enrollment in LTCI falling Medicaid will eventually pay out to cover these. How well projections will be able to capture this given the numerous variables and 'what-ifs' I don't know
As I mentioned earlier, those who Social Security is most important to aren't actually seeing increases in their life expectancy. What this would be doing is hurting the people who need Social Security because the people who don't need it are living longer. That seems like a bad idea, no?
Do you have anything to show that the difference in in life expectancy between rich and poor for those that attain adulthood is greater than it was in 1935? Overall that measure of life expectancy hasn't changed enough that I would think there would be a significant difference and it certainly seems like many more are reaching 65:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html