Yes, I do, sarcastic Freeper. Exempting current recipients from cuts just means that people like me who are decades from getting SS# will suffer bigger cuts. Why shouldn't current recipients bear some of the pain?
When the system began about 35% of the retired people in America lived below the poverty line. Now the number is about 9%. Taking benefits away from those who are receiving them should not be considered. It would upset many lives of senior citizens who have learned to live on their meager checks.
But, if something sensible isn't done younger folks like yourself are going to get the raw end of the deal, no doubt about it.
What we all need to work on is demanding that our next President and his (or her) congress commit themselves to making this work. There are ways to do it. #2 is to look at self determination and personal control over the accounts such as what was done in the early 80's in Galveston County, Texas.
In 1981, when Galveston County employees pulled out of the Social Security system, the program was projected to be insolvent by 2010.
In the Alternate Plan, retirement benefits are a direct result of employee contributions. In each paycheck, employees contribute 13.9 percent of the their gross pay (6.1 percent from the employee, 7.8 percent from the county) to a private account.
First Financial Benefits invests the accounts conservatively. The company guarantees a minimum rate of return of 3.75 percent to 4 percent on the accounts to safeguard employees’ benefits against inflation and severe drops in market rates.
Employees can elect to put their portion of the contributions into riskier investments, like mutual funds and stocks, potentially to generate more interest.
At retirement, employees in the Alternate Plan can choose to take the money in a lump sum, take monthly benefits for a given time period or take a lifetime annuity, with slightly reduced benefits. Social Security is subject to whatever rules the federal government makes and therefore there is not a guaranteed promise to pay any certain amount.
You weren’t addressing me, but I’m going to answer.
If you are decades away from collecting SS, you still have time to do something about lowered expectations and vote to force the gov’t to allow you to keep some of what you put into SS. It’s too late for baby boomers.
I'll answer that one- because current recipients can no longer alter their own circumstances. Younger people can make investment/retirement decisions that will change their circumstances. Much younger people can work at strengthening their families so that families become part of the old age support system as they once were.
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been sarcastic. It wasn’t nice.
I never thought I would get SS (hubby and I have planned without it altho if Obama has his way none of us will have anything, so what does it matter, we had better just know how to live off the land if there’s any of that around!)
Here is the problem as I see it. It doesn’t seem right to make promises to anyone (and they did pay in all these years, the money was taken out whether they wanted it to be or not, there was not an opt out). And not all of them voted for the people who are responsible —well, as far as they knew, I suppose we could make the case that virtually all of the politicians are responsible in one way or another but most people were probably not aware of it.
So, it seems a moral case can be made to somehow phase in as best we can some sort of system in which we step it down. Obviously people who deserve it less will still get a share but there’s no way around it. I’d like to bring back the guys who started it to life just so we could do something really bad to them. I can’t imagine they didn’t understand it would never work. But I also am sure they knew they’d be safely dead when it imploded.