That’s the year I turn 65…
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Raise the ceiling, raise the retirement age in stages, add in a slight increase (.2%, taking it up to 15.5%) that most people won’t notice coming from their taxes.
And fix Medicaid rather than beating it.
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How about decreasing benefits? The obvious part of the equation is declining birth rates.
Why should the current working generation have to pay a higher tax burden to support a larger elder generation?
At least the elder generation had some sort of agency to have more children or increase the immigration rate.
Current workers came in at the bottom of the Ponzi scheme.
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Raising eligibility age is the most politically palatable way of reducing benefits.
Nobody is going to vote to lower current checks and get reelected.
@jon-nyc said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
Raising eligibility age is the most politically palatable way of reducing benefits.
Nobody is going to vote to lower current checks and get reelected.
Well you’re right. There’s what’s theoretically fair (decreasing benefits), what might have a chance to be done politically (raising age limit) and what will probably happen (nobody does anything and it gets rolled into the debt until shit blows up).
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@jon-nyc said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
Raising eligibility age is the most politically palatable way of reducing benefits.
Nobody is going to vote to lower current checks and get reelected.
Well you’re right. There’s what’s theoretically fair (decreasing benefits), what might have a chance to be done politically (raising age limit) and what will probably happen (nobody does anything and it gets rolled into the debt until shit blows up).
@xenon said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
@jon-nyc said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
Raising eligibility age is the most politically palatable way of reducing benefits.
Nobody is going to vote to lower current checks and get reelected.
Well you’re right. There’s what’s theoretically fair (decreasing benefits), what might have a chance to be done politically (raising age limit) and what will probably happen (nobody does anything and it gets rolled into the debt until shit blows up).
I think we've got three avenues which will work:
- Raise the FICA wage base limit to infinity.
- Cap Social Security benefits at a certain level, just as is done now.
- Raise the age level slightly. You can't go too far, because while people are living longer, I think you're seeing people in ill health longer than we used to. Or, as a doc told me one time, when I was a young doctor, people got old, died and rotted. Now, people get old, rot and then die.
I think these are politcally do-able.
One which LuFin proposed, raising the tax rate, might or might not be politically palatable.
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Raising FICA would mean asking the people most able to afford to pay - to pay for a program they don't really need. The country and tax code are operated for their benefit. Why would they permit such a thing to happen? Can we find some way to further reduce their taxes so as to offset this onerous burden?
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Raising FICA would mean asking the people most able to afford to pay - to pay for a program they don't really need. The country and tax code are operated for their benefit. Why would they permit such a thing to happen? Can we find some way to further reduce their taxes so as to offset this onerous burden?
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Raising FICA would mean asking the people most able to afford to pay - to pay for a program they don't really need. The country and tax code are operated for their benefit. Why would they permit such a thing to happen? Can we find some way to further reduce their taxes so as to offset this onerous burden?
@kluurs said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
Raising FICA would mean asking the people most able to afford to pay - to pay for a program they don't really need. The country and tax code are operated for their benefit. Why would they permit such a thing to happen? Can we find some way to further reduce their taxes so as to offset this onerous burden?
Sarcasm or not, that's how it works today.
75% of the IRS "tax revenue" comes from the top 10% of earners. On the flip side, literally HALF the country pays about 2% of total IRS "tax revenue" and I would argue that bottom 50% also uses most of the tax money (health care, food, etc).
As long as the money you contribute to SS gets paid back to you, all is well. If not, I'd imagine we'll have some very interesting lawsuits against the federal government on our hands.
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@kluurs said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
Raising FICA would mean asking the people most able to afford to pay - to pay for a program they don't really need. The country and tax code are operated for their benefit. Why would they permit such a thing to happen? Can we find some way to further reduce their taxes so as to offset this onerous burden?
Sarcasm or not, that's how it works today.
75% of the IRS "tax revenue" comes from the top 10% of earners. On the flip side, literally HALF the country pays about 2% of total IRS "tax revenue" and I would argue that bottom 50% also uses most of the tax money (health care, food, etc).
As long as the money you contribute to SS gets paid back to you, all is well. If not, I'd imagine we'll have some very interesting lawsuits against the federal government on our hands.
@89th said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
As long as the money you contribute to SS gets paid back to you,
Don't have the numbers handy, but iirc, if you live to your projected age, you'll have received more in benefits than you put in.
Ponzi's gotta Ponzi.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@89th said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
As long as the money you contribute to SS gets paid back to you,
Don't have the numbers handy, but iirc, if you live to your projected age, you'll have received more in benefits than you put in.
Ponzi's gotta Ponzi.
@George-K said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
@89th said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
As long as the money you contribute to SS gets paid back to you,
Don't have the numbers handy, but iirc, if you live to your projected age, you'll have received more in benefits than you put in.
Ponzi's gotta Ponzi.
I believe it’s somewhere around 2% annual return? At least, that’s what it was 20 years ago during the privatization debate.
Question, what does the Federal Deficit look like without SS and Medicare?
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@Horace said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
They shoulda invested the SS fund in the stock market. We'd all be rich.
I wouldn’t want the government to own trillions of dollars worth of stocks. How long would it take to be abused?
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
@Horace said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
They shoulda invested the SS fund in the stock market. We'd all be rich.
I wouldn’t want the government to own trillions of dollars worth of stocks. How long would it take to be abused?
@jon-nyc said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
@Horace said in That’s the year I turn 65…:
They shoulda invested the SS fund in the stock market. We'd all be rich.
I wouldn’t want the government to own trillions of dollars worth of stocks. How long would it take to be abused?
Imagine the crisis in state pension funds if they followed the same rule as the SS fund has.
