Well, I don’t know what Chance’s is, but here’s mine.
Instead of having a bunch of different agencies managing a bunch of different benefits for different categories of the “deserving”–this for parents of young children, that for the unemployed, another for the poor in general, another for the aged, & then there’s the mess that’s disability law–let’s simplify it down to one.
Raise the taxes for every adult on all income–none of this “payroll tax” crap, and none of this “untaxed benefits” crap either–all income by, say, 10-15%. Then give every adult in the country an equal piece. For some it’s a deduction, for others a stipend. A few near the mean will break even. I don’t care if you’re retired, working, unemployed, or a malingerer. I don’t care if you’re young, old, or in the middle. I don’t care if you have kids or not; I’m not subsidizing your breeding. I don’t care if you’re disabled or able-bodied.
It’s libertarian! It’s socialist! It’s freaking demand-side stimulation, is what it is, children, & it will save American businesses from going under. You don’t need to be 65.
For those who think this an unforgivable giveaway, look at it like this: I’m not doing it for the beneficiaries (everyone below mean income)–I’m doing it for their vendors.
A) With higher/more progressive taxes, means testing is unnecessary. Let the rich collect their SS as a tax deduction.
B) Life expectancies haven’t gone up that much for laborers. The fact that lawyers are living longer doesn’t mean tradesmen need to retire later.
C) I would grant benefits to anyone who is part of this country’s economy, including resident aliens. Citizenship shouldn’t be withheld as an excuse to deny benefits.
SS should be pegged to life span. Pick however many years of retirement is fair (which will be one hell of an argument all by itself) and set SS starting to average life span minus that many years. Adjustments will be automatic unless Congress actively passes a law to change it. Pretty much the same way the amount of benefits is pegged to inflation currently basically.
This can be as simple as average lifespan for all Americans, or it can be based on average lifespan for socioeconomic classes which would mean a rich banker and a walmart employee retire at different times since they do have different lifespans. It just depends on how complex we’re willing to make it.
Currently SS benefits are based on a fairly complex process of examining your lifetime earnings. Payments instead should be equalized with all getting the same amount, preferably one that is significantly above the poverty line that we no longer hear the old story of grandma eating cat food. Modifying this sum by the cost of living index for a persons area would probably be a good idea too.
One thing I would like to see, and this is not just SS but the OP mentioned something similar, a single government office to assist with all possible entitlement programs. If someone is on disability, medicaid for their disability, food stamps, etc then they have to deal with a LOT of different departments, each with their phone numbers, rules, forms, requirements, and so on. I’d like to see a single place where they help with any government program, then forward the appropriate paperwork to whatever dept needs it. Not a combining like the OP mentioned, but a single front office for all the various resources available.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a voluntary op-out by the rich, but what by methods do you propose overseeing means testing if the rich person has a reversal of fortune? What if it happened en mass, would we have personel on hand waiting for just such a massive failure, or would people just suffer as social security scrambled to hire and train people to deal with the issue?
Think about what would have happened over the past three years if we’d instituted this in say 2000: thousands and thousands of people lost their shirts in the stock market, and the rich are a lot more likely to invest in stocks than the other classes.
Anyway, I’d significantly raise the tax cap, and increase retirement age more quickly than present. They raised it by 2 years ~twenty-five years ago, they could have raised it a year every ten instead and be in better shape.
Social Security is a really low priority right now. If we had the costs of Medicare/Medicaid and our general budget under control then I could see the point of addressing the future possible cost overrun of Social Security. Of course, at that point we would be in a much better position to deal with it. As it is the urgency to “fix” Social Security is being driven by a desire to end the program as we know it. In this case, governmental inertia is on our side. In our current political environment any proposal with a chance to be enacted is bound to be a bad idea.
In any case, by 2037 we will have a vastly different economy in a vastly different world. Concentrating on preparing our place in that world is a task that takes priority over the projected shortfall in Social Security funds. So, for now do nothing. Let changes to Social Security come not at the urging of its enemies but in response to the changing situation our nation finds itself in.
Raise retirement age, means testing for retirees, eliminate the max salary subject to withholding, raise the withheld percentage.
I’d also offer a ton of tweaks/restrictions to the disability programs (my area) including eliminating kids’ SSI. IMO a lot of the goals of SSI could be accomplished through enhanced medicare/public health services.
Actually, there’s one thing I would do, if briefly appointed dictator. I’d institute a major infrastructure upgrading program, which would have the multiple benefits of (a) actually fixing and upgrading our aging infrastructure - water and sewer systems, highway bridges, etc., (b) putting people back to work and bringing down our unemployment rate, (c) creating the paying customers that businesses need before they can hire more people and make the recovery self-sustaining, and (finally getting to the point) (d) increasing payroll tax revenues, which would put Social Security on a better footing.
You file income tax statements when you retire also. Simple enough to tie the cap to that. Couples filing jointly are more or less tested together, which seems fair.
Raising the cap is the easiest thing to do. I’m well above it, and wouldn’t notice an increase all that much. I’m not sure about boosting the retirement age faster. People working in offices can work longer, but those in factories or engaged in physical labor cannot. There is also the problem of not leaving jobs open for young people entering the labor force.
It is not like we have to do one or the other. There is a demographic issue, and the faster we solve it the less drastic the solution has to be. At the moment we can do fairly simple things, like raising the cap, which will push out the problem pretty far. It is true that the projections are very conservative, but being conservative is why SS has worked so well, and is exactly why dumping the money in the financial markets is a bad idea.
SS is really in pretty good shape. Supposedly most of the calls for reform come from groups that want to privatize it either for financial or ideological reasons. SS is about $600 billion a year, if it were 100% privatized then private companies would charge about 5% overhead to run the system, so $30 billion a year. And that number will grow with time.
Fundamentally minor tweaks will save the system. Raise the cap, lift the rate from 12.4% to 13 or 14%, raise the age 1 year, etc.
Medicine is what is bankrupting the country in both the public and private sector. The growing cost of health care is supposedly a major factor in private outsourcing and making the US less globally competitive, and it is bankrupting governments at the state, federal and local level.
You really have to reform medicine to make it more efficient and cost effective. I don’t see that happening anytime soon because the backlash from the public (don’t mess with the greatest health care on earth and other BS) and the companies that make money off the current system would kill any reforms. Any reform would likely have to be done at the grassroots or entrepreneur level IMO.
But back to SS, fixing it is easy. You can totally lift the cap, or raise it to 95% of wages. Then raise the tax to 13.4% or so and that should keep it solvent for a while.
If we don’t put the money into the market then what do we do with it? Right now what we do is use the (regressively taxed) OASDI to subsidize the (progressively taxed) General Fund. In essence, an upwards transfer of wealth. I don’t see the point of prolonging this. Better to reverse the trend and let the General Fund pay into SS.
Getting our general fiscal situation in order WILL address the demographic issue. If we don’t do anything the program won’t fall off of a cliff or anything. By 2037 or whenever the trust fund runs out we’ll be used to paying for SS out of the General Fund. The date will come and go with no stress at all. We can simply pay a bit more out of the General Fund than we did the year before. Assuming our federal debt is of managable size we can continue to do so right through the retiring population bulge until the program again takes in more than it spends. The extra income could then be used to slowly pay back into the General Fund.
I’m in the “do nothing” camp too. There are far worse problems in the federal budget than SS. Many of the “reforms” I’ve seen are just ways to give the banksters a new honeypot.
I think a better solution would be to make SS more progressive by raising the cap.
I am very nervous about using the General Fund to pay for it. State pensions are invested in the market. When the market falls, like now, the states have an obligation to pay them out of the General Fund. This gets harder to do politically and maintaining a balanced budget. Now at the federal level you can run a deficit, but I can just see the enemies of Social Security refuse to allocate money out of the General Fund without cuts. The current system means SS does not have to go to Congress for money. Last year SS ran a deficit because of much reduced income - not a problem because of the reserves. Having to go to Congress for money in a time of reduced revenue is going to be tough. Bad idea.
ETA: The current situation is a splendid illustration of why we shouldn’t put the money into markets. A decline in the markets, and the trust fund, will happen at the very same time there will be a decline in deposits and an increased need to run a deficit. There would be great pressure to cut back on benefits.
Leave the age alone, raise the cap and the rate together to keep SS and Medicare solvent based on current population number projections. Keep it a program for everyone.
Raising the age punishes the worker who needs physical capabilities.
Means testing will just hurt those without a good attorney and CPA. For example, I have carefully taken all assets out of the reportable hands of my parents. There will be no estate to tax, or assets to go after once they need some sort of hospice or long term care arrangement. For all legal and tax purposese they have their retirement income and live hand-to-mouth. I can do that, others can do that, so means testing will only catch the less sophisticated.
Another problem with means testing is that once you take some people out of the program, people that are some the more influential in our society, you also run the risk of seeing the program slowly destroyed. If I am never going to collect, will I care as much about the program?
