“Disagree completely on #2. If a person paid in, they need to get the payout. It was a contract, and that wealth was confiscated from them based on a contract. Raising the age should be fine because it is fair for all that paid in.”
Are you proposing that current workers pay much higher payroll taxes? How do you propose to fund the benefits?
Unfortunately Social Security is not a contract. The USSC has definitively ruled that individuals have no property rights in SS benefits. I am as unhappy as anyone about the situation. I have long known about the situation but politicians (mostly Democrats) have used entitlement spending to win elections. No one can win an election speaking the truth about entitlements.
I think the SS accounting is deliberately deceptive. SS has counted phony interest payments as part of its surplus. Without the phony government accounting, SS was running a deficit in prior years.
Happy talk about slowly increasing the retirement age is nonsense. Benefit reductions need to be made now for the retirement age and COLA. The COLA (CPI-W) is especially troubling. We look headed for a period of sustained inflation. The COLA will break the federal budget for SS and federal pensions (CPI-W - 1). Like the author, I favor incentives for individual to renounce or delay benefits. I will renounce all benefits in exchange for substantially lower payroll taxes. I am 56 so this deal is only in my interest because the alternative (collapse of the dollar) will wipe away my savings.
I agree with you. It is sooo hard for people to understand that “their money” was used to pay for the generation of workers retiring ahead of them. It was not set aside or saved and that was never the intent. If we wanted the same deal, each couple needed to have 2.5 - 3.0 kids minimum, with all of them going to work in an economy with a sustained growth rate of at least 5-7%. Otherwise, all bets are off. Mathmatically it just won’t work.
“I am 56 so this deal is only in my interest because the alternative (collapse of the dollar) will wipe away my savings.”
Thank you for understanding...there are VERY FEW people in your age group that bother to try to get their hands around what’s coming.
I think that most others are well-intentioned, but will not believe that the dollar can (and will) collapse, until it actually happens.
(and most Dems don’t really care if the dollar collapses, as long as they can find a way to pin it on Republicans)