Thread: How to fix Social Security

Tax rate is reduced to 6% and cant change. (no more ponzi scam)

ALL income is taxed at the same rate.
no matter the source (no more excluding investment income)
no matter the amount (no more $100k cap)

If you have ANY other income, you lose $.50 of SS for each other $1 made from pensions or investments or working.

Retirement age is reduced to 60.

While removing the cap and adding investment income would provide some extra revenue for the social security pool, the fundamental problem isn't tax rates, it's demographics. The ratio of workers paying in to retirees collecting has been getting steadily worse as the baby boomer generation leaves the workforce.

Reducing the retirement age would amplify the problem.

Originally Posted by Deuce

While removing the cap and adding investment income would provide some extra revenue for the social security pool, the fundamental problem isn't tax rates, it's demographics. The ratio of workers paying in to retirees collecting has been getting steadily worse as the baby boomer generation leaves the workforce.

Reducing the retirement age would amplify the problem.

Not quite. The problem is wage slaves dont pay much in SS taxes at $8.00hr jobs.
Now if we eliminate free trade and have $20hr min wage (citys) $15 otherwise then we will get back to a middle class that can pay taxes.
But this is all another issue.

So your plan would cut the taxes and increase the benefits. What could go wrong with that idea?

Here is a note from Charles Blahous, public trustee... "A 2003 Congressional Budget Office report found that 55% of projected program cost growth was due to population aging. The other 45% was attributable to growth in real benefit levels." The average life expectancy of a retiree is up about 7 or 8 years since 1935. It is about a 50% jump. In contrast the cost of the system has jumped 8 or 9 fold in that time. Here is an article that you might find interesting ; Charles Blahous: Nobody Is Proposing to 'Slash' Social Security Benefits - WSJ.com.

You are correct. Lowering the age would only increase the problem.

Fix Social Security Now - you can find us on FB.

Privatise it.
Just pray there's not another 08.

The only way to fix it is to stop the government from stealing from the fund!

Originally Posted by 274ina

Not quite. The problem is wage slaves dont pay much in SS taxes at $8.00hr jobs.
Now if we eliminate free trade and have $20hr min wage (citys) $15 otherwise then we will get back to a middle class that can pay taxes.
But this is all another issue.

I have actually studied this issue extensively.... and I can tell you that mathmatically it is NOT a lack of money problem that dooms SS to ultimate failure. SS works on a ratio of people paying into it (younger workers) to people taking out of it (older workers). As the ratio continues to decrease it will reach a point that the people paying into it, can no longer pay all of the people who take out of it, and it collapses.

Just because I was curious, and I thought that it might be interesting and informative to people here in the forum, I did some research and found the following. It was found on a .gov website.

http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chart...st_facts11.pdf

Take a look in particular at the last two pages and it will show you the true scope of the problem. SS CANNOT be fixed, unless you suddenly were to have millions of people that were not paying into, that suddenly are. This is one of the reasons that democrats are pushing so hard for amnesty for illegal aliens. But that is another discussion. And mathmatically, even if you DID suddenly add millions of people contributing into SS again, it would only push the problem out another few decades, before you ran into this very same problem again. It is the very same reason that all ponzi schemes fail. Eventually you run out of the sheer number of people it takes to support such a system.

Originally Posted by 274ina

Not quite. The problem is wage slaves dont pay much in SS taxes at $8.00hr jobs.
Now if we eliminate free trade and have $20hr min wage (citys) $15 otherwise then we will get back to a middle class that can pay taxes.
But this is all another issue.

With all due respect.... you need to educate yourself about how economics works. If you were to raise the minimum wage to $20/hr then a loaf of bread might cost you $100. The reason that money is valuable, is because it is a rare comodity. For example.... one of my favoite questions to ask people, is "If the govt gave everyone 1 million dollars in the US... would that be a good, or a bad thing?". Most people would say that would be great, because of what 1 millon dollars can purchase today. However, if suddenly EVERYONE had 1 million dollars, then the cost of everything would go WAY up.... because money is not all that rare anymore. This is what has happened in countries like Zimbabwe in Africa. It takes millions of (whatever their monetary unit is) to purchase anything.

It is the same reason that gold is valuable. If someone discovered tomorrow an entire mountain made of the stuff... to the point that gold was fairly easy to get.... then gold would not be worth much anymore either.

Originally Posted by armor99

Take a look in particular at the last two pages and it will show you the true scope of the problem. SS CANNOT be fixed, unless you suddenly were to have millions of people that were not paying into, that suddenly are. This is one of the reasons that democrats are pushing so hard for amnesty for illegal aliens. But that is another discussion. And mathmatically, even if you DID suddenly add millions of people contributing into SS again, it would only push the problem out another few decades, before you ran into this very same problem again. It is the very same reason that all ponzi schemes fail. Eventually you run out of the sheer number of people it takes to support such a system.

That's a very simplistic way of looking at the problem. While yes, right now we have a problem where there are more people retiring than there are people currently paying into the system, this is a result of the increased breeding that went on after WWII, we've known for decades this was coming. The problem, however, is that the government, seeing a surplus in the accounts for so long, as there were more people working and paying into SSI than were taking it out, decided to take all that money and use it on boondoggles and to cover budget shortfalls, instead of leaving it where it was for the use of those people who had paid it into the system. So today, not only do we not have enough people paying into the system, which we knew would happen, but all the money that the people were supposed to get back when they retired is long gone.

As for your other point, you don't seem to understand the cause of this problem, the over-breeding following WWII, something that is unlikely to ever happen again. Therefore, there will almost certainly always be more working people paying into the system than people who are legitimately retiring. If we can just get the politicians to keep their fingers out of the pie, things can work once this particular hump is past.