It's about time! And he forgot to say that the congress can spend the money on other things. It is a hoax to keep talking about a guarantee under these conditions. If the dems would truly represent their constituents, they would be highlighting the poor elderly people trying to get by on $450/mo instead of pretending that status quo is the best we can do.
I myself am embarrassed that I only just realized Canada's version of SS, the Canada Pension Plan is not a pension but merely a payroll tax like Unemployment Insurance
we had an employee just turn 65 and I was trying to find out if we need to keep taking his CPP contribution out of his paycheque when he was continuing to work
sure enough I found no information at the silly government website to answer a simple question but I did see that if you don't apply for CPP and you die in the interim, your estate is not entitled to continue receiving those benefits even if you paid into the system for 40 - 50 years, and even if you do apply and are receiving benefits, they stop on death and all your estate gets is $2500.00 to help bury you......
I mentioned this to my accountant who said yep it's not a pension plan, it's a misnomer and then you realize if you had invested that same amount of money, even conservatively over the last 40 years, know how much money that would be, of course that assumes you are a working stiff whose has a salary to do so......
our own plan is in similar trouble
I've been interested to know though, my sense is the Canadians were ahead of the Americans when it came to Registered Retirement Savings Plans, the equivalent to the 401K's in the US, because they've always known Canada Pension Plan wasn't going to cut it for most Canadians,
I need to research that some day, Canadians also get an Old Age Supplement, everyone gets the same amount, around $300 a month, whoopee, but if you make over so much income a year it gets "clawed" back, CPP benefits of course depend on how much you contributed over your lifetime and cannot be "clawed back"
for example how does the 401 K work today
in Canada, you can put up to 18% of your earned income into an RRSP up to a maximum this year of $16,000 and you receive a tax deduction for that $16,000 against your current income, so you save taxes twice, the initial contribution decreases your taxes for that year and then the money accrues tax free in the plan.....
if you don't use up your maximum in any year, you can carry forward that amount