Why try and talk about things you know zero about?
I planned my retirement years and years before that retirement day. As did the wife. Between the two of us we made good $, Enought to be able to hoard some, now add why I got into the insurance biz, After five years in the biz you become vestedl That means from here on out you get a % of all renewed biz. I wrote a lot of business in my 33 years.
The SS is a small supplement just as I planned it to be,
Dude now don't you feel silly?
You wouldn't have built up so much pension wealth for yourself if you had to financially support your parents in their retirement.
Yes he would, because (in this alternate hypothetical where SS didn't exist) he would have used what would have been his payroll tax.
Social security and medicare are easy programs to fix. Increase the payroll deduction and raise the cap on income for the payroll deduction and the program will be solvent for decades into the future.
Chipping away at benefits will be a disaster as more and more people are not saving enough (or at all) for retirement because of the high cost of housing, education and healthcare. If anything, social security should be expanded to provide benefits that actually cover housing, food and other necessities in retirement. Lifting the cap on the payroll deduction would help raise benefits.
I have to admit I drafted something very similar and gave up
I do not see this as so unfixable, really
raise the cap on contribution income levels
possibly move the early take to 63-64
full up to 68 that will be 1 year 2 months more than new eligible I believe
Maxed to 72
Good post, but I think you are not being aggressive enough with this. Raise the cap on contributions to a very high number, like $250M. Early take is fine, but lower the amounts offered early. Full to a higher age, possibly 70. Latest to start drawing could be 75, but with a lower percentage increase than current levels.
I am not sure most are aware that the SS tax is the least progressive, meaning those less able to afford it are taxed at a much higher percentage than those who will never "need" it. For those who argued that "they have paid into it", remember it is there as a supplemental program devised to keep people from being in abject poverty at the latter end of their lives. It was developed after the Great Depression, and acted as sort of a welfare program, but for the elderly who had lost everything.
They shouldn't be raising the age, they should be lowering it.
Too many freaking people can't retire because they don't have enough money and they can't afford health care. This results in people in their mid-50s on up to 70+ sitting in jobs they don't really want, just biding time. Keeps younger people from being able to move up. It's stifling creativity and hurting innovation.
They should drop SS to 60 for early retirement. Put in a rule to buy into Medicare at 55 or 60. This would encourage people to retire earlier, enjoy life, blah blah blah.
The likely reason we got a red wave in this election is that the CIA was already planning for the Fed to make huge budgetary cuts. While this would be political suicide for a lot of politicians (especially liberals), it would be in line with the platforms of a lot of the politicians that just got elected, including the President elect. It's not only no problem for them to get scapegoated for the cuts but many will celebrate the cuts as great news. The cuts were necessary for solvency and were going to happen no matter what.
They shouldn't be raising the age, they should be lowering it.
Too many freaking people can't retire because they don't have enough money and they can't afford health care. This results in people in their mid-50s on up to 70+ sitting in jobs they don't really want, just biding time. Keeps younger people from being able to move up. It's stifling creativity and hurting innovation.
They should drop SS to 60 for early retirement. Put in a rule to buy into Medicare at 55 or 60. This would encourage people to retire earlier, enjoy life, blah blah blah.
Simpler is making the tax based on Total Income with no deductions for anything, except don't tax Social Security benefits at all.
This means all investment incomes (nothing non-taxable, including Roths), all business incomes, all "deferred" salaries in the year "awarded", Capital Gains, and similar. The uber rich, like Musk and Trump are not paying into SS at all, or paying less than minimum wage earners.
I think that is what he is proposing, since he said earnings and not net income.
No. Earnings are after deductions are taking. That is how people like Trump and Musk can make millions while showing their taxable earnings are almost nothing. I like the proposal to make SS payments based on total income before any deductions are taken. Billionaires would be forced to pay in.
They shouldn't be raising the age, they should be lowering it.
Too many freaking people can't retire because they don't have enough money and they can't afford health care. This results in people in their mid-50s on up to 70+ sitting in jobs they don't really want, just biding time. Keeps younger people from being able to move up. It's stifling creativity and hurting innovation.
They should drop SS to 60 for early retirement. Put in a rule to buy into Medicare at 55 or 60. This would encourage people to retire earlier, enjoy life, blah blah blah.
Fair points.
Young people who want older people to keep on working are fools. The jobs they hold are the types young people complain they can't get because the older people won't retire.
My intent was satirical, but perhaps it says a lot about the state of our country that there's some question about it
Sorry. I thought it was satire, but, as you say, with the state of things around fact v fiction it becoming more difficult to see satire or irony without almost klunky identifiers! Ive read many Right wing comments on how the Left is racist, misogynist, misanthropist that I could have sworn was ironic, but....
The likely reason we got a red wave in this election is that the CIA was already planning for the Fed to make huge budgetary cuts. While this would be political suicide for a lot of politicians (especially liberals), it would be in line with the platforms of a lot of the politicians that just got elected, including the President elect. It's not only no problem for them to get scapegoated for the cuts but many will celebrate the cuts as great news. The cuts were necessary for solvency and were going to happen no matter what.
Can you recommend a good milliner? I need a tin foil hat like yours.
I am not sure most are aware that the SS tax is the least progressive, meaning those less able to afford it are taxed at a much higher percentage than those who will never "need" it. For those who argued that "they have paid into it", remember it is there as a supplemental program devised to keep people from being in abject poverty at the latter end of their lives. It was developed after the Great Depression, and acted as sort of a welfare program, but for the elderly who had lost everything.
The SS tax is progressive but so is the benefit. People who paid in the most get the lowest return on their contributions.
Why try and talk about things you know zero about?
I planned my retirement years and years before that retirement day. As did the wife. Between the two of us we made good $, Enought to be able to hoard some, now add why I got into the insurance biz, After five years in the biz you become vestedl That means from here on out you get a % of all renewed biz. I wrote a lot of business in my 33 years.
The SS is a small supplement just as I planned it to be,
Dude now don't you feel silly?
You wouldn't have built up so much pension wealth for yourself if you had to financially support your parents in their retirement.
Dude, I don't have a pension, ok?
When a sale is original I got 37%, renewals are 15%, so I get 15% of 33 years of business each month, Now toss in our savings (very substancial) and both our SS. so yes ..........life is good just like I planned it to be.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
When SS was first established, life expectancy was 62. Today, life expectancy is anticipated to be 79.25 at the end of 2024, according to ChatGPT. In spite of living longer, the age of full eligibility has only increased to 67.
A reasonable step is to phase in an increase of age of full eligibility to 69 while keeping early eligibility at 62. The savings would be significant. Actuarial tables show this would reduce the average payout from about 16 years to 14 years, but the real savings would be significantly more because about 23% start early SS at age 62 and 73% take early SS before age 67. Starting SS helps those who need the money, but it reduces lifetime SS payout.
This wouldn't totally fix SS, but it would reduce the federal government payout by... ballpark guess... 25% - 30%.
The real problem is not SS; it's Medicare. Not only are seniors living longer, obesity is greatly increasing lifetime Medicare payouts. Ten years ago when I researched this topic, I found that Medicare paid over 60% more annually for obese seniors than for those who were not overweight. As medical advances help the obese live longer, those lifetime Medicare payouts will increase even more. I suspect that it's probably close to 75% more already.
Edit: Haven't found current data yet, but this was interesting. Medicare Part D spending for a single drug... Ozempic... is increasing by over $1 billion/year! Big Pharma is lobbying to make Ozempic eligible for basic Medicare, which would increase the bill for Ozempic by over a trillion dollars/year.
That’s the double edged sword of Medicare: everybody wants it to cover expensive treatments that make people live longer. So, not only do people drag down the system longer, but the cost to treat them increases. Medicare should provide a baseline standard of care (you get old generic drugs that work almost as well as the proprietary high dollar drugs they try to sell you). After you hit 80, you don’t get surgeries, chemo, etc. If you want the high dollar drug and treatment coverage, you should have to pay for a supplement. Care is necessary, high dollar treatments in a fruitless quest for immortality are not. 51% of Medicare spending is surgeries. When these programs were first established, people with bad knees would limp until they died. Now taxpayers give them an implant that 20% of them regret.
Yes, this is what people inside the system complain about--the hideously expensive procedures being given to people with little life expectancies.
But it is extremely difficult to get support to cut people off and let them suffer and die.
You kind of need a sociopath for that.
Coincidentally, the US just elected one, so this might be a good time for it.
Although, there doesn't seem to be any real evidence that he has the ability to focus on anything for more than about 15 minutes, as he had both houses last time and forgot to ever actually change healthcare, after campaigning on doing exactly that.
But we can hope!
The President is really just a figurehead anyway, so it shouldn't require that he be able to pay attention.
I have to admit I drafted something very similar and gave up
I do not see this as so unfixable, really
raise the cap on contribution income levels
possibly move the early take to 63-64
full up to 68 that will be 1 year 2 months more than new eligible I believe
Maxed to 72
Good post, but I think you are not being aggressive enough with this. Raise the cap on contributions to a very high number, like $250M. Early take is fine, but lower the amounts offered early. Full to a higher age, possibly 70. Latest to start drawing could be 75, but with a lower percentage increase than current levels.
I am not sure most are aware that the SS tax is the least progressive, meaning those less able to afford it are taxed at a much higher percentage than those who will never "need" it. For those who argued that "they have paid into it", remember it is there as a supplemental program devised to keep people from being in abject poverty at the latter end of their lives. It was developed after the Great Depression, and acted as sort of a welfare program, but for the elderly who had lost everything.
People who are not aware that SS is not very progressive, are people who have not paid any attention, obviously.
But part of the entertainment of these boards is all the trolls whose comments are based on no attention to actual issues at all, but just insults and inflammatory kindergarten level stuff. It is just part of the charm of the site.
I am not sure most are aware that the SS tax is the least progressive, meaning those less able to afford it are taxed at a much higher percentage than those who will never "need" it. For those who argued that "they have paid into it", remember it is there as a supplemental program devised to keep people from being in abject poverty at the latter end of their lives. It was developed after the Great Depression, and acted as sort of a welfare program, but for the elderly who had lost everything.
The SS tax is progressive but so is the benefit. People who paid in the most get the lowest return on their contributions.
Not so.
People in the middle income brackets get the lowest return on their contributions.
have you folks considered that while you dingbats eagerly seek to send granny back to the grindstone for a few more years, that AI/computers/robots may be ending a lot of jobs??? i think this is anti-tax or budget-hawk crap ignoring the broader economic world in which granny would exist those added years before federal retirement. there are estimates 10s of millions of jobs are at risk in this country to AI in coming years.
it's kind of like where economists say we actually need more workers to support an ageing population but for racist/legalistic reasons people are pushing anti-migrant policies.
do you folks exist in reality or is this just push the same libertarian agenda crap i remember you pushing for decades.
The SS tax is progressive but so is the benefit. People who paid in the most get the lowest return on their contributions.
Not so.
People in the middle income brackets get the lowest return on their contributions.
i think what you're really badly missing is retired granny is no longer in the middle or top of income when she quits working. you also have some sort of youthful image. you understand granny may be chronically ill, falling apart physically, or otherwise a little old for the workforce much? or at all?
example -- this week i was waited on at a big box pet store by a grey haired guy who must have been in his 70s and had huge bruises on his arm. i was patient about it -- really felt bad -- but dude seemed a little out of it, took a long time to check out a moderate amount of items, and seemed confused what he had already scanned.
you may also then have more folks keeling over at work injured or sick or dead with potential liability exposure and stuff families out to shop don't need to see.
i also think, cut the crap, that the real issue here is the hard right of the GOP sees SS as socialism. they then play games with how it's funded. after that create-a-crisis, they say we can't afford what we promised.
have you folks considered that while you dingbats eagerly seek to send granny back to the grindstone for a few more years, that AI/computers/robots may be ending a lot of jobs??? i think this is anti-tax or budget-hawk crap ignoring the broader economic world in which granny would exist those added years before federal retirement. there are estimates 10s of millions of jobs are at risk in this country to AI in coming years.
it's kind of like where economists say we actually need more workers to support an ageing population but for racist/legalistic reasons people are pushing anti-migrant policies.
do you folks exist in reality or is this just push the same libertarian agenda crap i remember you pushing for decades.
I think you're underestimating how racist people are. They would happily live in sh!t with their granny eating cat food than admit taxes need to be raised on higher earners and immigration needs to be higher.
Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win a LetsRun t-shirt.Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win one of 10 LetsRun t-shirts.