extend the SS to upper earners if need be....
they always want the regular people to work longer but those govt employees whistling in the wind when they get to retire very early....
no cuts in SS or Medicare until govt employees feel the pinch...their pensions are our taxes afterall..
“I’m against making the younger people and middle age people pay more and work longer....
extend the SS to upper earners if need be..”
You’d have to change the SS benefit formula, or what you propose would only be a stopgap, as raising the income cap for FICA taxes, under the current formulas, wouold also mean those contributing more because they are higher inomce earners, will also be due greater benefits than what is the top benefit possible now. That would mean that if SS did not set aside those increased FICA taxes for the day those higher benefits would be gtting paid, then again SS debts, instead of getting cut down now, will just - as now - be kicked down the road. You’ll be eating those extra FICA revenues now, to help work off some of the SS problem now, and generate new IOUs because the higher benefits will be due later on. THAT will affect the “younger earners” you are trying to save from being part of the pain of repairing some of the SS debt debacle now.
The only solutions that are the least painful solutions are the ones that spread their pain broadly, some here, some there, some there, not narrowly. The more ways we can make adjustments the less painful will be the adjustments hitting any demographic class.
If I were to “blame” any generations it would be those getting benefits now and the “middle class” because it has been their same demographic of Congress critters that caused the problem, and then ignored the problem.
GWBush tried to direct a solution with that in mind when he tried to propose a different system for the younger eaarners now, that would give them a more privatized SS when they retired (getting their own accounts accumulated for them and benefits based on those personal accumulations). BUT his solution did not get far with Congress. The Dims rejected it outright (of course) but wiser GOPers also rejected it as it did nothing for the existing problem and because it did nothing for the existing problem and put younger earners FICA monies into a different plan, it made the existing problem worse.