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What Should The Retirement Age Be For SS?

JumpinJack said:
The boomers had a declining birth rate near the end of that generation...toward 1975. So as the older ones die, the number of beneficiaries should decrease somewhat.

The birth rate increased from 1975 to 1990.

The labor force has continually increased from 1990 to 2015, despite the birth rate going up and down. Influx of immigrants after Reagan's amnesty in 1986, plus more women entered the work force (which also contributed, I imagine, to the lower birth rate).

But it never hurts to have a surplus, so if it's tweaked to make it more sound, that might be the way to go. They've done it before.
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I do not think SS is expecting any surpluses anywhere in the next 50 years, if nothing changes.
 
JumpinJack said:
The boomers had a declining birth rate near the end of that generation...toward 1975. So as the older ones die, the number of beneficiaries should decrease somewhat.

The birth rate increased from 1975 to 1990.

The labor force has continually increased from 1990 to 2015, despite the birth rate going up and down. Influx of immigrants after Reagan's amnesty in 1986, plus more women entered the work force (which also contributed, I imagine, to the lower birth rate).

But it never hurts to have a surplus, so if it's tweaked to make it more sound, that might be the way to go. They've done it before.
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Just so you know, immigration rates should decrease as birth rates south of the border continue to decrease. Therefore, the boost SS gets from immigration should decrease as time moves forward.
 
faithful_servant said:
Or you could just handle it like a very conservatively managed IRA with approved, super low-risk investments and a low tax on the earnings to fund indigent needs. Allow the monies to be inherited (with the stipulation that they go into the heirs retirement accounts) to keep the excesses out of the gov't hands and in the private sector's. A 20 year phase in period with existing accounts rolled up into private accounts would work just fine.

Now start telling me all the things that are wrong with my proposal since I didn't make every single nit-picking detail perfectly clear, so that you can dismiss a working solution that your ideology hates.
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I do not want the government making "private" investment decisions (picking "free market" winners and/or losers) with public funds. SS is more like old age/disability insurance than a retirement account so treating SS as a personal account with a fixed value at the time of the account holder's death/disability is a bad idea - especially for survivor/disability benefits. The best fix is to increase "contributions" to support actuarial changes not to cut or limit benefits to maintain a fixed income (premium?) level.
 
Death.

Social Security is for the birds.

After the last person who is currently over 40-45 in America dies..have SS die with him/her.

Beef up welfare a bit/lot for the elderly poor and end the nonsense that is Social Security.

It was a lot like Obamacare..a nice idea that ballooned into an unsustainable whale that should be killed off.

Please repeat after me...ALMOST EVERYTHING GOVERNMENTS DO, THEY DO BADLY - VERY, VERY BADLY.
 
faithful_servant said:
Or you could just handle it like a very conservatively managed IRA with approved, super low-risk investments and a low tax on the earnings to fund indigent needs. Allow the monies to be inherited (with the stipulation that they go into the heirs retirement accounts) to keep the excesses out of the gov't hands and in the private sector's. A 20 year phase in period with existing accounts rolled up into private accounts would work just fine.

Now start telling me all the things that are wrong with my proposal since I didn't make every single nit-picking detail perfectly clear, so that you can dismiss a working solution that your ideology hates.
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It sounds like you may not fully appreciate the size of the problem. Every penny - every one - today is used to pay benefits of existing retirees. The SSA has said that not only will this continue for eternity, and grows worse every year.

Where are you going to get money to put into an IRA - conservatively managed or otherwise. The cost of what you are proposing might run $30 trillion - depending upon how you phase it in. Unless you have that in your back-pocket, you aren't going to be dismissed for ideology. You simply have typed non-sense.
 
Probably about 27. Evidence indicates people start to slow down at this point, and hey, we tolerate it for pro athletes
 
longview said:
I do not think SS is expecting any surpluses anywhere in the next 50 years, if nothing changes.
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Agree, extend the tax beyond $250k or whatever it is, and there you go
 
chromium said:
Agree, extend the tax beyond $250k or whatever it is, and there you go
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go? Where?

We can eliminate the cap and we don't kick the can. You want the solution with the fewest words. If that standard, we will sell cat pelts, and there you go. 5 words.
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
MarketWatch published three columns on the retirement age for Social Security.

This piece is from Jason Fichtner from Mercantus says that retirement age needs to move to 70. "The harsh reality is that Social Security wasn’t designed to finance 20 to 30 years of retirement."

The retirement age for Social Security needs to rise to 70 - MarketWatch

This piece is from Chris Farrell from MarketPlace which says that retirement age needs to move to 76.

Should the Social Security retirement age be 76? - MarketWatch

I contributed a contrast piece which said that the problem isn't that we are living longer. The problem is that more of us are living average. Up to now, the changes in life expectancy have made the system more solvent not less.

Why the age for Social Security benefits doesn’t need to go up to 70 - MarketWatch
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While I would disagree with the premise that life-expectancy is increasing due to more of us surviving childhood (my generation, for example, faced about a ~30% mortality rate before we even made it through our first year of life), I think we are approaching this backwards. The Retirement Age shouldn’t be set off of the average Death Age (life expectancy, whatever happy face we want to put on it), but rather built around when we lose the ability to work effectively.

Nancy Pelosi is a hysterical, hyperbolic, serial-lying bag of crazy, but she made the point once that a retirement age of 67 is very different for a white collar worker than it is for someone who works in manual labor. Maybe it was the coke talking, but she was right. We need a retirement system that allows for flexibility, rather than ratcheting some up beyond where they can go in order to serve an iron hypothetical.

ttwtt78640 said:
I do not want the government making "private" investment decisions (picking "free market" winners and/or losers) with public funds. SS is more like old age/disability insurance than a retirement account
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Insurance is designed to shift the risk of individually unpredictable catastrophic events. What is unpredictable or catastrophic about turning 62?

Social security is designed to provide some measure of protection against poverty in old age. It fails at this – 10% of our seniors live in poverty, and the bottom third of social security recipients don’t get enough to pull them out ($950 per month). Instead Social Security gives the most to those who need it the least, and the least to those who need it the most.

The best fix is to increase "contributions" to support actuarial changes not to cut or limit benefits to maintain a fixed income (premium?) level.
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:lol: oh-Ho! The “best fix” is to hike taxes on me and my children to pay for the bounced checks that the Baby Boomers wrote themselves! What a mighty self-sacrificial position you have there.

No. Thanks.
 
JumpinJack said:
The boomers had a declining birth rate near the end of that generation...toward 1975. So as the older ones die, the number of beneficiaries should decrease somewhat.

The birth rate increased from 1975 to 1990.

The labor force has continually increased from 1990 to 2015, despite the birth rate going up and down. Influx of immigrants after Reagan's amnesty in 1986, plus more women entered the work force (which also contributed, I imagine, to the lower birth rate).

But it never hurts to have a surplus, so if it's tweaked to make it more sound, that might be the way to go. They've done it before.
Click to expand...

Tweaks won’t get us there anymore. Even if we pass the largest tax increase in 5 decades, it doesn’t get us there. We have to revamp the program, or the program will tell Seniors Too Bad So Sad, You Get Less.
You can get rid of the cap, reduce the growth in benefits for the top half of recipients, and means-test out the rich, and it still won’t get you there.

And the longer we wait, the more drastically we have to adjust.


Broadly speaking, the model where each generation attempts to live parasitically off the following generation, instead of saving up for that generation, is backwards. We need to flip that model.



Casper said:
Only the wealthy are living longer to any measurable degree. The deal needs to stay as it stands, it was their deal, they took the money so now they need to make good on it, oh and they need to put back the money that they stole (opps, borrowed, silly me).
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:lol: oh. They should put it back. :) Okedoke. Let’s go find the Congresses and Presidents from 1980-2016 and ask for it back. I’m sure they have it in their hip pockets.

When you write a check for more money than you have in your account, it is not the bank’s fault when your check bounces. We spent years writing ourselves promises for which we didn’t have the money, and now we want to get angry that our account is empty?

We live in Representative Government. There is no “they” when it comes to these kinds of large, entitlement structures. There is “us”. WE decided not to worry about tomorrow, but spend on ourselves today. The only people getting screwed without their consent are the younger generations who will be paying down the debt incurred by Boomers for decades.
 
It needs to be a minimum of 70. After that, I think it needs to go up by a year every 5 to 10 years.
 
Gee, do you have to call them the SS? The SS is usually associated with the Nazi secret police.
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
MarketWatch published three columns on the retirement age for Social Security.

This piece is from Jason Fichtner from Mercantus says that retirement age needs to move to 70. "The harsh reality is that Social Security wasn’t designed to finance 20 to 30 years of retirement."

The retirement age for Social Security needs to rise to 70 - MarketWatch

This piece is from Chris Farrell from MarketPlace which says that retirement age needs to move to 76.

Should the Social Security retirement age be 76? - MarketWatch

I contributed a contrast piece which said that the problem isn't that we are living longer. The problem is that more of us are living average. Up to now, the changes in life expectancy have made the system more solvent not less.

Why the age for Social Security benefits doesn’t need to go up to 70 - MarketWatch
Click to expand...

too political. i believe we should eventually end social security in favor unemployment compensation, simply for being unemployed.
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
MarketWatch published three columns on the retirement age for Social Security.

This piece is from Jason Fichtner from Mercantus says that retirement age needs to move to 70. "The harsh reality is that Social Security wasn’t designed to finance 20 to 30 years of retirement."

The retirement age for Social Security needs to rise to 70 - MarketWatch

This piece is from Chris Farrell from MarketPlace which says that retirement age needs to move to 76.

Should the Social Security retirement age be 76? - MarketWatch

I contributed a contrast piece which said that the problem isn't that we are living longer. The problem is that more of us are living average. Up to now, the changes in life expectancy have made the system more solvent not less.

Why the age for Social Security benefits doesn’t need to go up to 70 - MarketWatch
Click to expand...

easy.. 65.

A promise made should be a promise kept.
 
JoeTheEconomist said:
MarketWatch published three columns on the retirement age for Social Security.

This piece is from Jason Fichtner from Mercantus says that retirement age needs to move to 70. "The harsh reality is that Social Security wasn’t designed to finance 20 to 30 years of retirement."

The retirement age for Social Security needs to rise to 70 - MarketWatch

This piece is from Chris Farrell from MarketPlace which says that retirement age needs to move to 76.

Should the Social Security retirement age be 76? - MarketWatch

I contributed a contrast piece which said that the problem isn't that we are living longer. The problem is that more of us are living average. Up to now, the changes in life expectancy have made the system more solvent not less.

Why the age for Social Security benefits doesn’t need to go up to 70 - MarketWatch
Click to expand...

The retirement age should be whatever the retirement age was when the program was sold to the public. Otherwise it's just another renege on a contract.
 
jaeger19 said:
Exactly.... it should be 65.
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Meh, one can still receive partial benefits starting at 62. I don't want full retirement age to go much beyond 67, tho.

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