Posted on 01/27/2013 5:24:56 PM PST by Libloather
**SNIP**
Social Security: 'Chained CPI'
Savings: $112 billion
The idea is to change the way the government figures out how much more seniors should get in Social Security benefits each year to account for changes in their cost of living.
This new formula — a tweak to the consumer price index — would assume that people switch their buying habits when prices rise, rather than just buying the same things over and over. So, for example, if the price of ground beef goes up, someone might buy chicken or fish instead.
The result: Social Security benefits will rise more slowly.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I think the liberal base is primed to ‘sacrifice for the common good’.
Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
“I think the liberal base is primed to ‘sacrifice for the common good’. Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.””
Like heck. To them getting a 47” plasma rather than a 54” plasma with their welfare check is a MAJOR sacrifice....just as settling for a 36 foot Winnebago rather than a 42 foot Winnebago is a MAJOR sacrifice for our side, should our welfare (i.e., Social Security) get means-tested.
That’s why it’s no-win. No one will give up their goodies.
Leave it to the left to come up with a (woefully inadequate partial) solution to the problem of entitlement costs that manages to break faith with people who paid Social Security taxes all their working lives. The only fix is to let the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security (and all non-military defined benefit pension plans) drift upward until the original relationship with life-expectancy is restored, but not for folks who have or are about to retire and made plans on the basis of the current system.
Personally, I advocate raising it by two months for each year of age under 60 a person is when the reforms passed until it reaches 72 or 73, then pegging it to life expectancy at age 60 so it goes up if people live longer (and down if some plague or socialized medicine decreases life expectancy). Ideally, the reform should also allow people in jobs requiring manual labor to more easily qualify for disability benefits when they hit an age near the current retirement age, while tightening disability requirements overall.
That is not the point I was making. My point is people who never paid a dime in FICA tax are given benefit checks. There are millions of old foreign born people in this category living in US and collecting benefits.
Wow. This simple Econ 101 I learned as a freshman in college. It's the concept of superior/inferior goods.
Only a government idiot, in 2013, would think they've invented the concept.
Or “means test” it when you retire. What a crock. You enter the workforce at a young age, they put a gun to your head and force you to pay 6.2% of your income up to the cap (matched by your employer) and if you are STUPID enough to become successful or save for the future, they say “oops, you don’t need SS...so sorry.”
Yep, but it was sold as insurance so the idiot masses would fall for it.
“That is not the point I was making. My point is people who never paid a dime in FICA tax are given benefit checks. There are millions of old foreign born people in this category living in US and collecting benefits.”
Same with other forms of welfare...so I don’t get what is special about FICA. Both are taxes and both payout benefits to people that qualify. Sure, we’d like to think we stored our FICA money in Al Gore’s Lockbox, but it doesn’t exist.
In other words, if we paid out the same benefits to foreign-born people, but didn’t say it was FICA, there would be absolutely no difference to this country or anyone’s retirement - we’re bankrupt either way.
The last to be 'reformed' will those belonging to reliable democrat voting blocks, meaning those the ethnic lobbies, illegal immigrant lobbies and public unions speak for.
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