Posted on 04/08/2024 8:59:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
What happens when one of the major political parties suggests the most modest of reforms to the benefits future Social Security beneficiaries will receive?
The other major political party goes ballistic.
Such were the atmospherics when the Republican Study Committee (RSC) played against the prevailing type with the GOP so far and issued a plan that included tweaking the retirement age.
According to the RSC plan, the changes are intended to “prevent Biden's cuts to Social Security.” Setting aside who would be responsible for any future benefits cuts – which are all but assured if no one does anything now to avert them — the plan attempts to cover its political bases as thoroughly as possible, noting that then-Sen. Joe Biden supported earlier tweaks to the Social Security system that raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 :
When President Biden served as a Senator in 1983, “…he was directly involved with one bipartisan compromise that became law and kept Social Security solvent for decades.” He, other Democrats, and Republicans came together in a bipartisan fashion to address Social Security's solvency issues at that time. Biden voted to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67, tax Social Security benefits for the first time, and delay cost-of- living adjustments to preserve the solvency of the OASI trust fund.
The new proposal suggests:
…delayed changes to the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) benefit formula, the retirement age, auxiliary benefits for high-income earners, and gradually moving towards a flat benefit.
It also urges all sides to come together and discuss reforms like adults and statemen, which is asking a great deal from the current bunch of time servers in the White House and Congress.
Too much, it seems, as Team Biden preferred to throw mud rather than talk:
…the Republican Study Committee – which represents 100% of House Republican leadership and nearly 80% of their members – just proposed yet another budget that would cut Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act, as well as increase prescription drug, energy, and housing costs – all while forcing tax giveaways for the very rich onto the country. Their plan would even raise the Social Security retirement age.
“Raise the Social Security retirement age…” just like Joe did way back in the day.
It's naïve to hope that the major parties would discuss such important fiscal matters in an election year (or any other year, really). But one might still hope that at some point, such discussions will happen despite the base instincts of pols and their handlers.
That point will come…sometime around 2033 or so when there won't be enough money to pay current beneficiaries…and their monthly checks will be cut. Act now, or cut later.
How about you greedy and thoughtless assholes redeem all of the IOUs that you gave us over the years when you raided the Social Security Trust Fund.
***Biden voted to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67***
When first passed the SS system wanted you to retire at 62 years of age, but the average life span then was 57 years.
Then came Penicillin...
1. Raise the full retirement age to 68 in 2025. Add another year to that in 6 months increments every 6 years or so until this gets to age 73 (e.g. 68.5 in 2031, 69.0 in 2037, etc. to 73 by 2085).
2. Keep the minimum eligibility age where it is, albeit with correspondingly lower benefits as the full retirement age increases.
3. In exchange for these increases, permanently remove the federal tax on benefits. That seems fair anyway, since the government frittered away any chance of getting real returns on the monies collected from us over the years.
I’d love to also phase out the FICA taxes over time, replacing them with a mandatory personal savings plan that workers can’t touch until at least age 65... but the existing retirees have to be funded, and that comes from the current FICA taxes (since the govt screwed that up, too), so somebody with better spreadsheet skills will have to do that math.
Republicans should be proposing an opt out, not a salvage plan for the Ponzi scheme.
Let people who want to stay in conventional Social Security do so, provided that the system is funded entirely by those who choose to stay.
No one would stay.
The question then becomes how to amortize the unfunded liability. Deal with that separately.
About 20 years ago the AARP Magazine had an article on why the SS system was NOT a PONZI Scheme.
All Ponzi Schemes collapse. Since SS had not collapsed it was not a Ponzi Scheme.
A few pages on in was an article by Jane Briant Quinn on how the SS system was set up. Without saying the word “Ponzi” the SS is set up just like a Ponzi Scheme except the government FORCES in new people to pay at the bottom.
With the forced mRNA “vaccines”; surely enough senior citizens were murdered, so there should be a surplus in Social Security
Biggest financial scam in history prior to the Climate Crisis scam.
The hell with that. Raising the SS age? And if they don’t then SS benefits get cut? My ass...
They spew a firehose of money at Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, etc. Hell, even the sicko Palestinians get all the US cash they need.
12 million illegals are getting in the 2000-2500 range a month PER FAMILY MEMBER. An SS retiree gets nothing like that. If they have another retirement before getting all their SS credits, such as cop, firefighter, teacher, military etc, they get their SS cut down by 40-60%. SOme get 500 dollars or less in SS despite getting fully vested by work before and after the “double dipping” job.
And then there is the penalty for additional earnings over 19k or so for people drawing SS. Every dollar over that comes off your benefit. Why? And in term of when that 19k limit was set, it would be around 40k today.
They sodomize SS retirees every way imaginable, and then say that’s the first place to cut. And idiot repubs lead the charge.
And then last but not least. Imagine a wall street company that took 14% of your pay for 45 years, and at the end of that time paid you back 1700 a month as long as you lived, and when you died, they kept the change. They would be in a cell beside Bernie Madoff.
Anyone investing 14% of their income for 45 years should have a million in the bank, draw 4k a month and never touch the principal.
And then of course, they TAX your SS benefit, lie about inflation to depress COLA.
And the idiot republicans, our heroes, charge in right before the election yammering about raising the retirement age? Not forbid illegals from going on disability, not forbidding benefits to illegals doubling the amount SS retirees get. Not a moratorium on foreign aid. Not cutting off 100,000 government farce expenditures.
No, the repubs want to squeeze retirees a little more.
Idiots.
I can tell you with confidence, whatever the retirement age will be will continue to be at least a year or two ahead of my age.
They’d be thrilled to give you what you put in since most get way more than they put into it.
You will hear many GOP proposals about SS this year.
They are all Swamp Filth and are doing it to gut Trump vote totals.
Do NOTHING until Trump is in office draining the Swamp.
Always was
That’s my money so give it back to me NOW!
Current retirees thank you. I’m not eligible until 2036. I’ll be thanking the current workers of that time. Even if it’s only 500 bucks since they will lower it I’m sure.
Nothing better than millionaire republicans who “work” in government cush jobs or careers like law and finance telling blue collar workers who do physical work to delay until 67.
Or Larry Fink of Blackrock, 1.2 billion net worth saying retiring at 65 is a “bit crazy”.
“No one should have to work longer than they want to,” Fink wrote. “But I do think it’s a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age — 65 years old — originates from the time of the Ottoman Empire.”
Yeah billionaire Larry, before the Ottoman Empire, nobody ever dreamed people 65 might be near the end of their work career.
Idiots.
I think raising the cap to 250K would extend it awhile.
They can pay interest on that money too. Since they have held it.
In any case I want what is due to me since they have picked my pocket my whole working life.
Will have to follow this...
Oh sorry we thought we would use our money for our retirement. Instead of giving it to stranger ass holes like you too lazy to leave mommy’s basement to get a job
article:
“sometime around 2033 or so when there won’t be enough money to pay current beneficiaries”
Let us analyze this statement.
It assumes that tax money paid into the system is the same tax money that is paid out of it.
This is a blatancy false assumption.
Here is the “Social Security Trust Fund”:
This is a classic shell game.
There is no pea under the shell.
SS is a ponzi scheme—with guns.
SS will be fixed after it fails, not before.
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Exactly! All a responsible party can do at this point is highlight the risks and shortcomings of the current system - encouraging a dialogue between members of all parties. After that, let problems arise (all the while noting that conservatives have been predicting the problems for quite some time). Remind the American people that poll after poll shows that Americans never really wanted any significant reform until the problem got out of hand. The party can only be as responsible as the American public allows it to be (because the results are losing elections and simply letting the other party have access to government spending and social policy making).
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