Social Security Fix

Absolutely against this proposal. Particularly, for this reason "Markets recover. If the market tanks right as Joe was planning on retiring, he can work for an extra year while it rights itself, or simply choose to draw less from the account in order to leave more in there to ride the upswing."

People's retirement should be a guarantee if they pay into the system, it should NEVER depend on what the market is doing. That is insane.

That's very detailed and good thinking. But First you would hafta find some politicians who would actually care about doing this. They only care about what they can rob from it or manipulate it to gain new voters or hold onto the same old farts they've always had.
You're not going to find anybody in Washington who is serious (or has a plan) to "reform" SS.
I have never even thought of being able to use any money from SS or any other government program for my well being or retirement.

One very important question, please...

The majority of Boomers have been forced to put money into the existing Social Security and Medicare systems all their entire working lives. So, do you think you should put your plan into effect for people who, today, are 25? Or maybe 35? Or maybe even 45? Do you think it should be phased-in over the next ten or fifteen years, and only for people who are in their prime working years?

Surely, you DON'T imagine that 80,000,000 Boomers are going to vote for anyone who is going to try to engineer some big confiscation screw-job and inflict these big, "new-reality" changes on them right as they are about to retire? That is as politically unlikely as it is monstrously unfair to people who have been forced by law to observe one set of rules, only to be screwed by a new set of rules...?!

SS would not be in any difficulty at all until at least the year 2032 if it weren't for all the huge masses of people who have miraculously qualified for "disability" during the Obama years, right after they were finally thrown off of unemployment payments! How about THAT?!

If they'd go through and get everybody OFF of disability who is really not disabled, that would go a long way toward solving any problems. That, plus the fact that most Boomers will be dead by 2032 pretty much solves the rest of any problems. But, hell, at the rate we're going, we'll be destroyed in a war by then anyway, so it may be irrelevant what kind of "retirement" that the Millennials think they'll get -- after they get jobs that could even provide them with a retirement-level income in the first place....

Kal'Stang said:

SS is not broke. It is over drawn due to politicians using it for things that it was never designed to be used for to begin with. It was designed to be used only for retirement. That's it. Instead our politicians saw it as a free dipping money jar and started "borrowing" from it in order to pay for damn near anything that they couldn't get money for legitimately.

Want to fix SS? Make the politicians pay back all the money they "borrowed" from SS.

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It is broken. The politicians broke it by doing exactly what you pointed out. And they have no intention of paying it back. They will just continue to rob from it and ask it's intended future recipients to delay their retirement or accept less benefits

ObamacareFail said:

It is broken. The politicians broke it by doing exactly what you pointed out. And they have no intention of paying it back. They will just continue to rob from it and ask it's intended future recipients to delay their retirement or accept less benefits

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baby boomers do not want to retire because they know that the cost of living is too high, considering they may live 25 years after they retire.. Unless they are sitting on a big retirement or trust fund, which most are not. It hurts younger people with so many older people that are still in many job markets, but can you blame them? They are only doing what they feel they hafta given the economic realities.
And as you say, the government isn't going to do anything to help the situation, anything they do makes it worse.

Shadowless said:

Absolutely against this proposal. Particularly, for this reason "Markets recover. If the market tanks right as Joe was planning on retiring, he can work for an extra year while it rights itself, or simply choose to draw less from the account in order to leave more in there to ride the upswing."

People's retirement should be a guarantee if they pay into the system, it should NEVER depend on what the market is doing. That is insane.

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:lol: yeah. So Joe retires at the time and draws less.... which is still what? Double what he would have made from Social (in)Security?


Math.

Pollycy said:

One very important question, please...

The majority of Boomers have been forced to put money into the existing Social Security and Medicare systems all their entire working lives. So, do you think you should put your plan into effect for people who, today, are 25? Or maybe 35? Or maybe even 45? Do you think it should be phased-in over the next ten or fifteen years, and only for people who are in their prime working years?

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It's a phased program due to the guaranteed benefit. For those who are 45, their accounts will probably replace the Social Security benefit fully. Those who are 55 will get the same monthly benefit, but it will come partly from their accounts, and partly from the government.

So let's say you are 55, and you retire at 65, having made an average of $60,000 (about average for that age group) a year for the previous 10 years. Their monthly draw out would be ~$400. If their SS benefit was scheduled to be $1200, that would mean a monthly $800 cost to the government, a monthly $400 withdrawal from their SS account, and a monthly $1200 benefit for them, the same as if we'd been able to fund SS to begin with.

Surely, you DON'T imagine that 80,000,000 Boomers are going to vote for anyone who is going to try to engineer some big confiscation screw-job and inflict these big, "new-reality" changes on them right as they are about to retire?

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The "Big New Reality" changes that occur under this program are that the cap is popped, and the guaranteed benefit grows more slowly for upper income earners.

SS would not be in any difficulty at all until at least the year 2032 if it weren't for all the huge masses of people who have miraculously qualified for "disability" during the Obama years, right after they were finally thrown off of unemployment payments! How about THAT?!

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That is not entirely true. OASI is in trouble now because it has been running a deficit for the last couple of years. It's just in worse trouble because they took funds from it to bolster SSDI.

If they'd go through and get everybody OFF of disability who is really not disabled, that would go a long way toward solving any problems.

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Not really. We'd still be running an annual deficit. SSDI is a separate chunk of funds.

That, plus the fact that most Boomers will be dead by 2032 pretty much solves the rest of any problems

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People do die, and at (over large numbers) statistically predictable rates. That does allow planning for the reduction in costs incurred by older cohorts.

But, hell, at the rate we're going, we'll be destroyed in a war by then anyway, so it may be irrelevant what kind of "retirement" that the Millennials think they'll get -- after they get jobs that could even provide them with a retirement-level income in the first place....

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That is mostly a function of discipline. Our grandparents saved with less.

The best fix for SS is to dump it cold turkey.

cpwill said:

It's a phased program due to the guaranteed benefit. For those who are 45, their accounts will probably replace the Social Security benefit fully. Those who are 55 will get the same monthly benefit, but it will come partly from their accounts, and partly from the government.

So let's say you are 55, and you retire at 65, having made an average of $60,000 (about average for that age group) a year for the previous 10 years. Their monthly draw out would be ~$400. If their SS benefit was scheduled to be $1200, that would mean a monthly $800 cost to the government, a monthly $400 withdrawal from their SS account, and a monthly $1200 benefit for them, the same as if we'd been able to fund SS to begin with.



The "Big New Reality" changes that occur under this program are that the cap is popped, and the guaranteed benefit grows more slowly for upper income earners.



That is not entirely true. OASI is in trouble now because it has been running a deficit for the last couple of years. It's just in worse trouble because they took funds from it to bolster SSDI.



Not really. We'd still be running an annual deficit. SSDI is a separate chunk of funds.



People do die, and at (over large numbers) statistically predictable rates. That does allow planning for the reduction in costs incurred by older cohorts.



That is mostly a function of discipline. Our grandparents saved with less.

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Your plan does have some interesting features, and some of them could be beneficial. I do like the idea of "popping the cap", because that would make the entire system more fair for everyone. The plan would be less onerous to older people because it would be phased-in. One last very important question, then: do we understand that you would leave everything undisturbed and unchanged for all people who have currently achieved their full-retirement age?

And, a parting observation... yes, our grandparents 'saved with less' -- BUT, our grandparents didn't have to deal with the Federal Reserve System combine artificially suppressing interest rates on their savings accounts so that "too-big-to-fail" corporations could borrow money on the cheap to buy back their own stock with. It also has allowed banks to belly-up to the Fed's discount window, get all the money they could possibly want, and go sit on it and make a fortune just by sitting on it.

Interest rates in our grandparents' time were low but in line with true demand in the overall context of the economy. By contrast, the "Fed" has been squashing interest rates in this country since August 2007 to near-zero, when, in fact, the demand for credit should have taken interest rates well over 8% - 9%. (Too bad Burr didn't shoot Hamilton a few years earlier than he did... we might never have had the groundwork laid for a central bank in the United States).

Pollycy said:

Your plan does have some interesting features, and some of them could be beneficial. I do like the idea of "popping the cap", because that would make the entire system more fair for everyone. The plan would be less onerous to older people because it would be phased-in. One last very important question, then: do we understand that you would leave everything undisturbed and unchanged for all people who have currently achieved their full-retirement age?

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No. While no one would lose any money, the highest earners will see their benefits grow slightly slower.

And, a parting observation... yes, our grandparents 'saved with less' -- BUT, our grandparents didn't have to deal with the Federal Reserve System combine artificially suppressing interest rates on their savings accounts so that "too-big-to-fail" corporations could borrow money on the cheap to buy back their own stock with. It also has allowed banks to belly-up to the Fed's discount window, get all the money they could possibly want, and go sit on it and make a fortune just by sitting on it.

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Our grandparents had the Fed, and if you are saving for retirement in a savings account, you're doing it wrong. I don't really accept that as a reason why we shouldn't be saving now.

cpwill said:

No. While no one would lose any money, the highest earners will see their benefits grow slightly slower.



Our grandparents had the Fed, and if you are saving for retirement in a savings account, you're doing it wrong. I don't really accept that as a reason why we shouldn't be saving now.

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I don't think you will gain acceptance for your overall plan unless you exempt everyone who is 62 years old, or older from it entirely. Those Boomers were, as I said, forced by law to play by one rigid set of rules. And now they're supposed to sit still and have somebody change the rules? That is nothing more than confiscatory crap, and every Boomer will tell you so.

As far as the Federal Reserve System goes, the hyperlibs in Government saddled us with this thing (which was never mentioned once in the Constitution) 102 years ago -- Woody Wilson, and his klatch of blithering idiot Democrats in Congress. This glorified cartel of private bankers who make up the Fed get to set interest rates to whatever they please, without regard to what real supply and demand calls for, both in money supply, and in interest rates. Ben "Helicopter" Bernanke, and now this Bernanke-without-a-beard clone, Janet Yellen, have wanted to roust everybody out of savings accounts and into the Great Casino since summer of 2007, the stock market! And, they've squashed interested rates down to almost complete zero in order to do it. The whole thing is a rotten fraud and the Federal Reserve should be done away with completely, with the real responsibility given back to the free-market economic system and the Treasury Department.

Pollycy said:

I don't think you will gain acceptance for your overall plan unless you exempt everyone who is 62 years old, or older from it entirely. Those Boomers were, as I said, forced by law to play by one rigid set of rules. And now they're supposed to sit still and have somebody change the rules? That is nothing more than confiscatory crap, and every Boomer will tell you so.

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They aren't losing anything, benefits are growing slower for the top half of income earners. They don't have the option of "nothing changes" at this point. They can choose a glide path now, or a sharp, ugly drop later, but they dont get to choose to have mathematical reality not apply to them. If they don't like that, well, they have no one to blame but themselves.

As far as the Federal Reserve System goes, the hyperlibs in Government saddled us with this thing (which was never mentioned once in the Constitution) 102 years ago -- Woody Wilson, and his klatch of blithering idiot Democrats in Congress. This glorified cartel of private bankers who make up the Fed get to set interest rates to whatever they please, without regard to what real supply and demand calls for, both in money supply, and in interest rates. Ben "Helicopter" Bernanke, and now this Bernanke-without-a-beard clone, Janet Yellen, have wanted to roust everybody out of savings accounts and into the Great Casino since summer of 2007, the stock market! And, they've squashed interested rates down to almost complete zero in order to do it. The whole thing is a rotten fraud and the Federal Reserve should be done away with completely, with the real responsibility given back to the free-market economic system and the Treasury Department.

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And go back to... The gold system? There isn't enough gold. We can try to fix the fed, but we are stuck with it.

Saucey said:

baby boomers do not want to retire because they know that the cost of living is too high, considering they may live 25 years after they retire.. Unless they are sitting on a big retirement or trust fund, which most are not. It hurts younger people with so many older people that are still in many job markets, but can you blame them? They are only doing what they feel they hafta given the economic realities.
And as you say, the government isn't going to do anything to help the situation, anything they do makes it worse.

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I am one of those baby boomers. I could take early retirement in just a few weeks if I wanted, however I intend to wait for full retirement in four years. You are right..it will mostly hur the younger people who will be asked to retire later and later, be taxed more and expect less benefits to make up for the shortfall caused by the politicians embezzling the funds.

cpwill said:

They aren't losing anything, benefits are growing slower for the top half of income earners. They don't have the option of "nothing changes" at this point. They can choose a glide path now, or a sharp, ugly drop later, but they dont get to choose to have mathematical reality not apply to them. If they don't like that, well, they have no one to blame but themselves.

And go back to... The gold system? There isn't enough gold. We can try to fix the fed, but we are stuck with it.

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Yes, we do have the option of not screwing people who have already reached retirement age. Anything else, as I already called it out -- is confiscatory crap! That's exactly the kind of nonsense that wrecked Crusader Rick Santorum's campaign in 2012, and it has already contributed quite a bit to the death-spiral that both Jeb Bush and Butter-tub Christie have experienced in the Republican race this cycle.

Mark my words -- even though she's completely incompetent to be a President of the United States, Hillary Clinton will win in a landslide, supported strongly by Boomers in both political parties, if Republicans, or Federal Reserve enthusiasts, or whoever else it is decides to try to push any of these fraudulent schemes to cheat people out of their EARNED Social Security benefits. And why would Hillary win, exactly? Because even a witless, negligent, careless hyperliberal Democrat has more common sense than to think that the best way to get elected is to SCREW people and think that they won't notice it! Schemers like Jeb and Christie will make Democrats out of even staunch, conservative Republicans -- believe it or not!

Pollycy said:

Yes, we do have the option of not screwing people who have already reached retirement age. Anything else, as I already called it out -- is confiscatory crap! That's exactly the kind of nonsense that wrecked Crusader Rick Santorum's campaign in 2012, and it has already contributed quite a bit to the death-spiral that both Jeb Bush and Butter-tub Christie have experienced in the Republican race this cycle.

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:lol: you can rant all you like about it, it doesn't change the math. The math is that they aren't going to get their full benefits as currently scheduled. The official date for Failure was 2029, and then they took even more money out to prop up SSDI, meaning that the "official" failure date is now somewhere in the mid 2020s. Except that Social Security is already running a deficit, making it dependent on the General Fund, meaning that Medicare going down is going to help take Social Security with it. SSDI is scheduled to go under again in 2022, and guess where they've already got a precedent for getting the money from? Meaning that in about (waggles hand) 8ish years or so, everyone's benefits are getting cut across the board. Boomers don't have the option to just take everything they've promised themselves, after spending the surplus that was supposed to pay for it, on themselves.

Mark my words -- even though she's completely incompetent to be a President of the United States, Hillary Clinton will win in a landslide, supported strongly by Boomers in both political parties, if Republicans, or Federal Reserve enthusiasts, or whoever else it is decides to try to push any of these fraudulent schemes to cheat people out of their EARNED Social Security benefits.

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:roll: slowing the growth in benefits just for upper income earners isn't a fraudulent scheme to cheat anyone out of anything. But rhetoric like that will help ensure that Hillary gets elected, and it will also help ensure that those folks who didn't want to see slower growth get a cut instead. Instead of getting a smaller raise every year, they're going to get a "Too Bad, So Sad, **** You" card in the mail.

The Boomers have written a check that they can't cash. They can either glide themselves out of it starting now, or stick their head in the sand and get it chopped off later. :shrug:

And why would Hillary win, exactly? Because even a witless, negligent, careless hyperliberal Democrat has more common sense than to think that the best way to get elected is to SCREW people and think that they won't notice it!

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The screwing was done decades ago, when Boomers voted themselves more government than they wanted to pay for, and so spent their SS surplus on it instead, and then voted themselves better benefits to boot. The math is the math. We can either glide out now by slowing the growth for upper income earners and putting SS investments into higher-return vehicles, or we can wait a couple of years and then start telling old people to cut their lifestyle by a third.

The irony is, if Boomers hadn't aborted ~30 million of their kids, we'd have more people paying into the system now, and it'd be more solvent. Boomers didn't save for themselves and, if they follow your advice, they are going to screw up their chance to maintain government support.

Schemers like Jeb and Christie will make Democrats out of even staunch, conservative Republicans -- believe it or not!

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Hopefully Republicans aren't that stupid. The GOP has run on a platform of entitlement reform for a couple of cycles now. Marco Rubio, for example, ran on a platform of entitlement reform and won against an incumbent of his own party in Florida.

This is happening, boss. You can either figure out ways to make it go better, or you can pretend it isn't a problem until we're six inches from the wall and still traveling at 80mph, but it's happening.

cpwill said:

:lol: you can rant all you like about it, it doesn't change the math. The math is that they aren't going to get their full benefits as currently scheduled. The official date for Failure was 2029, and then they took even more money out to prop up SSDI, meaning that the "official" failure date is now somewhere in the mid 2020s. Except that Social Security is already running a deficit, making it dependent on the General Fund, meaning that Medicare going down is going to help take Social Security with it. SSDI is scheduled to go under again in 2022, and guess where they've already got a precedent for getting the money from? Meaning that in about (waggles hand) 8ish years or so, everyone's benefits are getting cut across the board. Boomers don't have the option to just take everything they've promised themselves, after spending the surplus that was supposed to pay for it, on themselves.



:roll: slowing the growth in benefits just for upper income earners isn't a fraudulent scheme to cheat anyone out of anything. But rhetoric like that will help ensure that Hillary gets elected, and it will also help ensure that those folks who didn't want to see slower growth get a cut instead. Instead of getting a smaller raise every year, they're going to get a "Too Bad, So Sad, **** You" card in the mail.

The Boomers have written a check that they can't cash. They can either glide themselves out of it starting now, or stick their head in the sand and get it chopped off later. :shrug:



The screwing was done decades ago, when Boomers voted themselves more government than they wanted to pay for, and so spent their SS surplus on it instead, and then voted themselves better benefits to boot. The math is the math. We can either glide out now by slowing the growth for upper income earners and putting SS investments into higher-return vehicles, or we can wait a couple of years and then start telling old people to cut their lifestyle by a third.

The irony is, if Boomers hadn't aborted ~30 million of their kids, we'd have more people paying into the system now, and it'd be more solvent. Boomers didn't save for themselves and, if they follow your advice, they are going to screw up their chance to maintain government support.



Hopefully Republicans aren't that stupid. The GOP has run on a platform of entitlement reform for a couple of cycles now. Marco Rubio, for example, ran on a platform of entitlement reform and won against an incumbent of his own party in Florida.

This is happening, boss. You can either figure out ways to make it go better, or you can pretend it isn't a problem until we're six inches from the wall and still traveling at 80mph, but it's happening.

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OK, I get it now... you advocate a Christie-style "means testing" rigmarole... is that it? Sure sounds like it to me.

What is undeniable is that this whole socialistic bag of worms was put in place over EIGHTY years ago, by the great demi-god of American Socialists, Frankie Roosevelt, not Republicans, and not Baby Boomers (obviously). It was made far worse by Frankie's star-pupil, Lyndon Johnson, with his "Medicare/Medicaid? debacle. And now, after several decades of vote-buying, Libocrats of all stripes have piled more and more parasites, slugs, and leeches onto the benefits roles -- a large number of whom have no business getting anything at all, because they have paid little or nothing into these systems!

But irrespective of that, let me turn back to government and our wonderful Federal Reserve and make one final point. They moved heaven and earth to provide rescue, safety, and further enrichment to all the "too-big-to-fail" institutions, investment bankers, and other RICH parasites during the Great Recession (a process which has continued to this day) -- right? Why weren't they told, "Screw you! You caused this disaster with your criminal fraud and slimebag business practices -- now, go to a soup kitchen or go to hell!"...?

The point... if government and the Federal Reserve private banker cartel could come up with a "rescue" of untold billions of dollars to save Wall Street then they can also save Social Security, too! But, as we know, that really won't be necessary until 2032, especially if we get rid of the bums and mooches on "disability".

Pollycy said:

OK, I get it now... you advocate a Christie-style "means testing" rigmarole... is that it? Sure sounds like it to me.

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No. I stated that I think we should slow growth for the top half. I generally don't like Christie for President, but he is correct when he states that we need to be honest with the American people about the state of the entitlements, just as Mitch Daniels was correct when he argued that the American people are grown-ups, and capable of having adult conversations about fiscal reality, and what to do with it.


[[later edit]] So I looked up Christie's Plan:

...Christie proposes reducing Social Security payments for people making more than $80,000 in additional income and eliminating the benefits altogether for people making more than $200,000 or more a year. He also calls for raising the retirement age to 69 and raising early retirement to 64....

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So this is not my plan at all, as I don't kick people off SS, or slash benefits. I think that raising retirement age to 69 is bad because it harms those workers who belong to low skill and physical fields (think, construction). I see where he figured that we had to do that as well as cut out the people bringing in more than $200K a year in retirement in order to make the program solvent, but that is because he assumes we continue to rely on government revenues, rather than higher returns from the market, as built into my plan here.

We may get to where we have to do this in order to protect the benefit for lower-income seniors, but I would want to see a way to keep from raising retirement age, and I would want to see a way to provide a floor at the poverty level. I just also don't think that we are (yet) at the point where we have to do this. Though if we continue to delay, we will get there.

What is undeniable is that this whole socialistic bag of worms was put in place over EIGHTY years ago, by the great demi-god of American Socialists, Frankie Roosevelt, not Republicans, and not Baby Boomers (obviously).

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Oh, you'll get no argument from me that FDR was an awful President. Boomers, however, chose to keep voting themselves generous benefits while also choosing to spend the surplus on more government for themselves, while not having enough kids to keep making the payments when they were in retirement. Since "Social" Security "Socializes" the Security, it also "Socializes" the blame for the decisions your generation makes. :shrug: Boomers put themselves in this situation.

But irrespective of that, let me turn back to government and our wonderful Federal Reserve and make one final point. They moved heaven and earth to provide rescue, safety, and further enrichment to all the "too-big-to-fail" institutions, investment bankers, and other RICH parasites during the Great Recession (a process which has continued to this day) -- right? Why weren't they told, "Screw you! You caused this disaster with your criminal fraud and slimebag business practices -- now, go to a soup kitchen or go to hell!"...?

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Hm. I wouldn't say that every bank that was in trouble was so as a result of their criminal fraud or slimebag practices (though some were, and it is also worth noting that the lying criminals also included lots and lots of regular Americans who lied on their loan applications) - they were in trouble because they made stupid assumptions, and did it with too much debt.

However, I agree as well that the bailouts were a serious problem, and generally shouldn't have happened. Depositors would have been protected by FICA, and if you bought a bunch of Mortgage Backed Securities in 2007 "because housing always goes up by 5%", you would have been screwed.

The point... if government and the Federal Reserve private banker cartel could come up with a "rescue" of untold billions of dollars to save Wall Street then they can also save Social Security, too! But, as we know, that really won't be necessary until 2032, especially if we get rid of the bums and mooches on "disability".

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No. As I already told you, the last estimate wasn't 2032, it was 2029. And that was before they took the money out to prop up SSDI, which is scheduled to take more money out of OASI in 2022. And slashing retirees benefits in 2032 isn't really any more desirable than slashing them in 2025 - you are still slashing retiree benefits that they have planned for and depend on.

So, at this point, we don't really have an option but to tell people near retirement age that there are going to be changes. The question is, do we make those changes now so that we can spread them out and have them not screw anyone, or do we wait, and make it worse when change is forced upon us.

ObamacareFail said:

I am one of those baby boomers. I could take early retirement in just a few weeks if I wanted, however I intend to wait for full retirement in four years. You are right..it will mostly hur the younger people who will be asked to retire later and later, be taxed more and expect less benefits to make up for the shortfall caused by the politicians embezzling the funds.

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No offense but I just hope stuff changes at least some when some of the baby boomers start exiting the upper echelons of the government and big business..Because honestly most of them are big gov bureaucrats, regardless of what party they are in. I honestly believe we have some real conservatives in my generation (30-45), but many of them I find are very disinterested in the future. They are basically only concerned with paying the bills today and enjoying life as much as possible.

Saucey said:

No offense but I just hope stuff changes at least some when some of the baby boomers start exiting the upper echelons of the government and big business..Because honestly most of them are big gov bureaucrats, regardless of what party they are in. I honestly believe we have some real conservatives in my generation (30-45), but many of them I find are very disinterested in the future. They are basically only concerned with paying the bills today and enjoying life as much as possible.

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Absolutely no offense taken. I agree with you. The majority of baby boomer politicians are establishment politicians, regardless of which party. Boehner was never really conservative, neither is McConnnell. The republicans do vote on and pass a conservative platform every four years at convention time, however they do little more then give it lip service at election time. Once safely re-elected, they go on with the mostly go along to get along philosophy. There are exceptions, however mostly Washington DC has been "Liberal versus Liberal Lite"

cpwill said:

No. I stated that I think we should slow growth for the top half. I generally don't like Christie for President, but he is correct when he states that we need to be honest with the American people about the state of the entitlements, just as Mitch Daniels was correct when he argued that the American people are grown-ups, and capable of having adult conversations about fiscal reality, and what to do with it.


So this is not my plan at all, as I don't kick people off SS, or slash benefits. I think that raising retirement age to 69 is bad because it harms those workers who belong to low skill and physical fields (think, construction). I see where he figured that we had to do that as well as cut out the people bringing in more than $200K a year in retirement in order to make the program solvent, but that is because he assumes we continue to rely on government revenues, rather than higher returns from the market, as built into my plan here.

We may get to where we have to do this in order to protect the benefit for lower-income seniors, but I would want to see a way to keep from raising retirement age, and I would want to see a way to provide a floor at the poverty level. I just also don't think that we are (yet) at the point where we have to do this. Though if we continue to delay, we will get there.

Boomers, however, chose to keep voting themselves generous benefits while also choosing to spend the surplus on more government for themselves, while not having enough kids to keep making the payments when they were in retirement. Since "Social" Security "Socializes" the Security, it also "Socializes" the blame for the decisions your generation makes. :shrug: Boomers put themselves in this situation.

Hm. I wouldn't say that every bank that was in trouble was so as a result of their criminal fraud or slimebag practices (though some were, and it is also worth noting that the lying criminals also included lots and lots of regular Americans who lied on their loan applications) - they were in trouble because they made stupid assumptions, and did it with too much debt.

So, at this point, we don't really have an option but to tell people near retirement age that there are going to be changes. The question is, do we make those changes now so that we can spread them out and have them not screw anyone, or do we wait, and make it worse when change is forced upon us.

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In fairness, I can see that it is justifiable that the full-retirement age should be raised. People live longer, and they work longer. I also voiced support for your idea of "popping the cap" so that people pay FICA on everything they earn... not just the first $118K.

Additionally, I'm also vehement about the need to totally overhaul the U. S. Tax Code to remove ALL loopholes, shelters, exemptions, exclusions, and the practice of "parking" American corporations' investments and profits overseas instead of bringing those back into the U. S. immediately following the year they were earned. As it is, there are a lot of wealthy Americans who actually pay little or nothing in taxes!

That said, there is no way that it can be fair to "change the deal" on people AFTER they've worked their entire lives under one set of rigid rules, and then being told spitefully, that we have to have an "adult conversation" about some bunch of confiscatory, revisionist nonsense that somebody just dreamed up a few months ago. Do you understand? Nobody ever told any American, of any era, "You will collect only x-dollars of your earned Social Security entitlement for every offspring you have that enters the workforce", or some ad hoc twaddle like that.

Before we start shaving anybody's earned benefits, though, we need to get the bums and parasites off the SS benefit roles! If after that they qualify legitimately for food stamps, TANF, free housing, free utilities, etc., then so be it, but get them OFF of Social Security "disability" unless they are verifiably disabled!

I close by reminding you that Boomers aren't stupid. We (yeah, I'm one, too) were the last comparatively well educated generation this country has produced, generally, and we VOTE. Anybody, be it a Crusader Rick Santorum, or a Butter-tub Christie, or Jeb Bush, had better have more to recommend screwing people out of any of their earned Social Security entitlement than some nonsense about needing to have an "adult conversation". We watched this whole stinking, rotten, unfair, unjust thing go down where the government and the Federal Reserve made rich criminals even richer -- so all these crudballs had damned well better do whatever is necessary to "save" this 80 year-old retirement system! Anybody advocating anything else will never be elected to anything, ever again, and the Republican Party will have committed suicide....

Pollycy said:

In fairness, I can see that it is justifiable that the full-retirement age should be raised. People live longer, and they work longer. I also voiced support for your idea of "popping the cap" so that people pay FICA on everything they earn... not just the first $118K.

Additionally, I'm also vehement about the need to totally overhaul the U. S. Tax Code to remove ALL loopholes, shelters, exemptions, exclusions, and the practice of "parking" American corporations' investments and profits overseas instead of bringing those back into the U. S. immediately following the year they were earned. As it is, there are a lot of wealthy Americans who actually pay little or nothing in taxes!

That said, there is no way that it can be fair to "change the deal" on people AFTER they've worked their entire lives under one set of rigid rules, and then being told spitefully, that we have to have an "adult conversation" about some bunch of confiscatory, revisionist nonsense that somebody just dreamed up a few months ago. Do you understand? Nobody ever told any American, of any era, "You will collect only x-dollars of your earned Social Security entitlement for every offspring you have that enters the workforce", or some ad hoc twaddle like that.

Before we start shaving anybody's earned benefits, though, we need to get the bums and parasites off the SS benefit roles! If after that they qualify legitimately for food stamps, TANF, free housing, free utilities, etc., then so be it, but get them OFF of Social Security "disability" unless they are verifiably disabled!

I close by reminding you that Boomers aren't stupid. We (yeah, I'm one, too) were the last comparatively well educated generation this country has produced, generally, and we VOTE. Anybody, be it a Crusader Rick Santorum, or a Butter-tub Christie, or Jeb Bush, had better have more to recommend screwing people out of any of their earned Social Security entitlement than some nonsense about needing to have an "adult conversation". We watched this whole stinking, rotten, unfair, unjust thing go down where the government and the Federal Reserve made rich criminals even richer -- so all these crudballs had damned well better do whatever is necessary to "save" this 80 year-old retirement system! Anybody advocating anything else will never be elected to anything, ever again, and the Republican Party will have committed suicide....

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Glad to hear you are educated. I'm in the process of wrapping up a second masters degree myself. At no part of my program, however, did they tell me that getting very angry meant that math no longer applied.

We can reduce expenditures by little now, or by more a few years from now. But the program as written is not sustainable. Choosing to ignore that because those making more than 200K Earned Their Benefit is like demanding to go down with the Titanic because you paid first class.

If we hook the funding mechanism into something with higher returns (like the market) then we can shave less, and no one needs a cut v a slower growing. But the returns take a few years to really come on line, meaning that that will not be an option for us a few years from now. We can shave gently now, or cut harshly in the future, but one of those is going to happen, and being mad and swearing that you'll just topple the boat to take everyone down isn't going to alter that basic reality.

The funding for SS has never been hidden. We knew that we would need kids to pay for us in 1975, we knew it in 1985, we know it now. It was also public knowledge that we were spending the SS surpluses on ourselves, year after year. We are now at the crossroads that those decisions put us at. Being angry (again) does not change where we are, and it does not change the math. Boomers are ****ed if we do not find a way to fix this system to make it sustainable, and voting against doing so only increases the odds that you will be ****ed harder.

Pollycy said:

OK, I get it now... you advocate a Christie-style "means testing" rigmarole... is that it? Sure sounds like it to me.

What is undeniable is that this whole socialistic bag of worms was put in place over EIGHTY years ago, by the great demi-god of American Socialists, Frankie Roosevelt, not Republicans, and not Baby Boomers (obviously). It was made far worse by Frankie's star-pupil, Lyndon Johnson, with his "Medicare/Medicaid? debacle. And now, after several decades of vote-buying, Libocrats of all stripes have piled more and more parasites, slugs, and leeches onto the benefits roles -- a large number of whom have no business getting anything at all, because they have paid little or nothing into these systems!

But irrespective of that, let me turn back to government and our wonderful Federal Reserve and make one final point. They moved heaven and earth to provide rescue, safety, and further enrichment to all the "too-big-to-fail" institutions, investment bankers, and other RICH parasites during the Great Recession (a process which has continued to this day) -- right? Why weren't they told, "Screw you! You caused this disaster with your criminal fraud and slimebag business practices -- now, go to a soup kitchen or go to hell!"...?

The point... if government and the Federal Reserve private banker cartel could come up with a "rescue" of untold billions of dollars to save Wall Street then they can also save Social Security, too! But, as we know, that really won't be necessary until 2032, especially if we get rid of the bums and mooches on "disability".

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Oddly enough FDR actively worked against what Social Security has become :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ial-security/2012/04/08/gIQALChd4S_story.html

Saucey said:

No offense but I just hope stuff changes at least some when some of the baby boomers start exiting the upper echelons of the government and big business..Because honestly most of them are big gov bureaucrats, regardless of what party they are in. I honestly believe we have some real conservatives in my generation (30-45), but many of them I find are very disinterested in the future. They are basically only concerned with paying the bills today and enjoying life as much as possible.

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This is a piece that you will find interesting. He doesn't see any generational warfare. He thinks that it will be a good thing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ef1512-9392-11e5-8aa0-5d0946560a97_story.html

Pollycy said:

In fairness, I can see that it is justifiable that the full-retirement age should be raised. People live longer, and they work longer. . ..

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No they aren't. More people are living a normal lifetime. These are totally different problems.

Pollycy said:

I also voiced support for your idea of "popping the cap" so that people pay FICA on everything they earn... not just the first $118K. ..

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You are willing to throw someone else's money at the problem that you are unwilling to throw your own time at understanding.

Pollycy said:

That said, there is no way that it can be fair to "change the deal" on people AFTER they've worked their entire lives under one set of rigid rules, and then being told spitefully, that we have to have an "adult conversation" about some bunch of confiscatory, revisionist nonsense that somebody just dreamed up a few months ago. Do you understand? Nobody ever told any American, of any era, "You will collect only x-dollars of your earned Social Security entitlement for every offspring you have that enters the workforce", or some ad hoc twaddle like that. .

Click to expand...

You basically want to reward the voters who have ignored the problem the longest.

Your money wasn't 'taken'. The people you voted for reformed the system and you expect the current voters to have money taken based on a promise that your politicians made to you. The terms of system haven't changed since 1960. You give and someone else might give for your retirement. Flemming V Nestor. Anything else is just revisionist twaddle.