It might be accurate to say that Boomers never raised their own retirement age- but the Boom is generally considered to be those born between 1946 and 1964. And the increase in retirement age started with those born in 1938, which was before the Boom. So yeah, the Boomers may not have raised their own retirement age depending on how the Boomers voted ( some weren’t old enough to vote in 1980) but it was raised for them.
It was always a very weak pretense, certainly. But I don’t think your statement follows. The amount of SS dollars you get out has always depended on how much you put in. Not in any kind of 1:1 sense clearly, but still, there’s clearly a sense that at least some of the dollars you get out are ones you put in.
Plenty of people would choose to opt out of SS completely if they could. That cuts their benefits to zero. Heck, lots of people would opt out of all SS benefits if their taxes were only cut by half.
And there is something else that may be more important than that pretense - you can’t collect SS unless someone contributed. Maybe you, or maybe your spouse, but if neither you nor your spouse contributed, you can’t collect. Not everyone does contribute - certain jobs are exempt and people who don’t work don’t contribute. And that keeps it from being “welfare” which is politically easier to cut.
You are correct. This is not the first time a stair-step up in retirement age has happened. I was born in 1956 and in 1983 my full retirement age was upped from 65 yrs to 66 and 4 months. And the stair step went up to 67 for full retirement for some people born later.
What they are going to do is add another stair so that younger people still paying into the system will not reach full retirement age until later. 70 yrs of age, 72?
They left early retirement at 62 yrs last time. I don’t expect that to continue. Early retirement will llikely go to 65.
But don’t worry, all the people currently getting benefits will not be effected. Just everyone still paying, as required, into the SS system. Young? yeah, you are going to get fucked.
That was me. Born in 1963 and it’s 67 for me and I had been putting into the system for three years when it happened. I’m taking it when I’m 62 so it didn’t end up mattering.
Somehow the point has been missed that when there are two workers for every retiree, one third of everyone’s production will have to siphoned off, one way or another to the retired people. It is not merely a question of money. If there is more money in the system than goods we get massive inflation. Or the retirees get thoroughly screwed. Just not enough workers.
I can still remember when one of my grandfathers retired having paid into SS for only a couple years. There was no pretense that what paid in had any connection with what he received. It worked well enough when population was growing steadily, but not so much when it is shrinking. Do I hear the P word, anyone?
Ding ding ding. Let’s not pretend we don’t know why in 2023 this has finally become a political front-page issue.
Here is a 6-month old thread on much the same topic which was getting a lot of traction in late Feb, just 2 weeks ago.
Perhaps you are unaware that if you start taking SS at 62 you get less. It is set up so that no matter when you retire your total return is the same if you live to the expected age of whatever. Of course if you live longer you win, but if you die earlier you lose.
There is absolutely no reason to raise the payout. I’m getting close to the maximum payout, waiting until 70 to take it, and I’m just dandy if the system is made secure without any more money. I suspect most would be.
I trust you are unfamiliar with von Neumann Morgenstern utility theory. The pain of a rich person losing $1,000 is much less than that of a poor one losing $500. It might mean the poor person will have trouble paying for food, it might mean the rich one will make a smaller deposit in a bank account.
I looked on the AARP site, and see no opposition to raising the cap. There is opposition to lowering benefits, no surprise there. Do you think all Boomers oppose this, or just Republicans of all ages?
The idea that anyone with a clue thought that our payments were being specifically saved for us is a standard Republican porkie. The surplus was being stored, by buying bonds, but most went right to recipients, as is obvious from the fact that people started getting money when the program began.
It’s too bad we don’t have Republicans like Reagan anymore, who at least grew up poor with some sense of empathy. He’d be considered a RINO today.
Ronald Reagan would be considered a liberal today, what with his concessions toward the EPA and Department of Education (despite trying to dismantle both early in his tenure) and generally willing to compromise to achieve actual results, including having cocktails with ‘Tip’ O’Niell on a regular basis. Reagan didn’t back white nationalists or talk about how there are “very fine people on both sides” in reference to neo-Nazis, because despite backing an illegal scheme to arm violent revolution against a democratically elected government, invade a small island nation of no strategic potential, and trade weapons for hostages, he wasn’t a race-baiting fascist. And even if he was terminally slow to embrace efforts to fight AIDS and recognize the threat it posted toward all Americans, including homosexuals, he didn’t actively advocate for suppressing and invalidating their existence.
Reagan isn’t just a RINO; he’s a anachronism of an era where being a Republican had both some allowance for nuance and a sense of public responsibility even if Reagan himself didn’t think he should be personably accountable for violating laws.
Stranger
Finally?? I don’t know why you say this. It has been a front page issue on and off for years. Remember Simpson Bowles during the Obama administration? Remember Bush trying to “save” it by draining lots of money into private accounts? Republicans and “enlightened centrists” (who Krugman calls “Very Serious People”) have been trying to cut SS and Medicare for decades.
Anyway, the idea is silly – we must cut social security today! Because if we don’t, we may have to cut it in the future! Or, raise taxes, or take it from the general fund, or maybe the demographics will work out, or something else.
I probably should stay out of these discussions, because my views seem to differ from most of you.
My impression is that Social Security appears quite differently if you primarily view it as a part of the social welfare net, as opposed to as a forced retirement savings program. And it affects people quite differently if you are one of the 60-70% of recipients (sorry, I forget the specific numbers and don’t care to look them up for this post) for whom SS retirement makes up 90-100% of your retirement income, as opposed to someone who could live quite comfortably off of their 401k/investments/pension, and are actually INCREASING their wealth in their retirement.
I personally think a country as wealthy as ours ought to afford a more robust safety net for those who have been the least successful - and that that safety net ought to be financed disproportionately by those who have been the most successful. I also view SS retirement as an integral part of that safety net - rather than just as a part of each individual’s personal investment portfolio. And I believe income redistribution is a significant - tho intentionally underemphasized - goal of many Social Security programs. I realize many people disagree with any or all of these basic premises.
Reflecting my basic premises, I think SOME MANNER of means testing should be a portion of any changes to SS. IMO, for a person who is pulling in - say - over $100k/year in retirement income to whine about any reduction to “MY SS benefits” simply strikes me as greedy. Which doesn’t really surprise me, because greed underlies so much of what passes for “American values.” But just call it what it is. You’ve had the great fortune - and worked hard - to succeed in our system. Congratulations! I mean that. And now that you have, you just want to greedily hang on to every penny you can grab, you don’t really give a damn about the less fortunate, and to the extent you think anything should be done for them, you want someone else to pay for it. No real problem assuming that position. Just be honest about it.
(Full disclosure - it certainly does not make me an expert about SS reform, or my views any more valid than anyone else’s, but I’ve worked for SS for 36+ years and counting.)
Thank you for articulating that position better than I could have.
As one of the “greedy” ones, I understand and generally agree with your position. If I knew that not collecting “my SS” would mean people in need would get more I’d have no problem supporting your plan. My fear, (and belief) however, is that if I got means tested out of my benefits we’d just cut taxes or something, and the people who could use those funds would never get them.
It’s an interesting thought experiment though. If the people getting $800 per month could be bumped up to $1200 per month by slashing or eliminating my $3000 per month, that would probably be a good thing. In reality, they’re not going to raise people up by eliminating my benefits.
Making SS means tested would put the whole program at risk, because suddenly it becomes another version of welfare, where “those people” are getting things they don’t deserve. Plus, I doubt it would have that much of an effect on the program, since there aren’t many people in the, say, top 10% of earners, but they make a lot of money and can contribute much more than those in the the bottom 50% of earners.
And, now it becomes much more complicated to administer, trying to figure out who gets what. Right now, the SSA knows exactly how much people of contributed over what time frame and can calculate their benefits. If it becomes means tested, now the SSA has to review income, make sure people aren’t hiding income or assets, and so on. All the administrative overhead that affects food stamps and Medicaid will also have to be built up at the SSA.
Disaster from top to bottom, and likely doesn’t do much to help the financial situation.
Right, once SS is lumped in with other welfare “entitlement” programs, it becomes much easier for it to become a hot political issue and get rejected as socialism. We don’t want that, so I don’t think we should change the payout side at all.
But on the pay-in side, we should get rid of the income caps for sure. Or at least raise it up at a rate to ensure that the fund remains solvent. They have regularly increased the payout side to keep up with inflation, do they do the same for the income cap? It needs to go up, and I say that as a worker who is substantially above the cap amount.
They’re already running SSI, which does exactly that. If your income, including your regular Social Security benefits, is low enough, you can get supplemental benefits through the Social Security system, at least if you’re already in the system.
But the proposals I’ve seen aren’t to means test the whole program, which I agree would run into political problems; but just to raise the ceiling of the income on which people have to pay in; without, presumably, raising the highest amount which gets paid out; or, at least, without raising it enough to swallow most or all of the additional income. That is I suppose a sort of means testing, in the form of ‘the top level of benefits is already enough to live on reasonably comfortably, we see no need to give anybody more than that’ combined with ‘if you have higher income, then you have enough means to pay more in’.
Well, I would argue that SS already is - to whatever specific degree we could argue over - a part of the welfare system.
A great many folk at the lowest earnings level draw a far higher return on their “investment” than the highest earners who consistently paid the max. Widows and children get benefits based on an earnings record, but not necessarily their own. Disability is different than retirement, but is it coincidence that when Clinton “ended welfare” that claims for SS disability climbed?
Folk on the “It’s my money, not welfare” end of the spectrum just draw their definition of “welfare” in a manner that protects their personal interests. That’s fine. But don’t expect anyone to believe that you are adopting that position - that you just coincidentally benefit from - because of your support for the overall program! 
I have a hard time viewing it other than, who am I more concerned about, the folk who have been least successful in our system, or those who have been the most successful? What do I think is “right” for a country as wealthy as ours, as opposed to what do the wealthiest have the political power to block?
As I’ve said - piss off everyone but raising the withholding rate, eliminating the cap, AND SOME DEGREE of means testing. You are telling me some minimal increased tax on the highest wealth/income retirees is going to tank the entire program? Bullshit!
I’d also likely include some increase in the age but, as others have observed, I fear that would unjustly affect lower income, blue collar folk as opposed to wealthier white collar professionals.
IMO you grossly overstate the additional administrative costs that would be involved, and suggest a lack of awareness as to the extent the IRS and SSA have long interacted.
The fact that certain people - coincidentally, most often the wealthiest - will make considerable efforts to minimize/avoid paying what I consider their “fair share” does not, IMO, create a sufficient basis for government not taking appropriate action.
Sure, our system protects wealthy peoples’ interests in countless ways such that they can claim they are just complying with the law. Such provisions should be narrowed and audited/enforced. But that’s a whole nuther kettle of fish.
I guess we need to distinguish between what OUGHT to be done, and what likely WILL be done. Because the one thing I suspect we can all agree on is that no politician is going to do ANYTHING meaningful, so long as they can kick the can down the road, and close their eyes to the fact that that asteroid screwing towards the earth is getting nearer and nearer, and will require SUBSTANTIALLY more effort to avoid tomorrow than if we just nudged it’s trajectory today.
So the later I get in my career, the more I see a situation where I’m obligated to use words like ‘I’m fortunate’…but the feeling I REALLY have is that at my families income level, we’re firmly in the donut. We make too much to benefit from the handouts, but not enough to skirt the responsibilities. My current calculations have a tickmark for Social Security, but I’m not really counting on it, and the fortunate side of things was that I always paid into a 401k and never had to touch it due to financial hardship. Mostly, I’m deathly afraid that diligent savings will be sucked up by an MBA somewhere seeing my demographic as an untapped well (cough Medical costs cough)
If they calculate and determine we made too much to receive Social Security? Well fuck, won’t be the first time. Part of living in a society, I guess.
Is it greed? I dunno, I don’t feel like I’m over here laughing maniacally in my piles of cash, but I AM trying to figure out how to outstrip inflation and what I can have a month to spend…with a little dose of ‘hope I don’t run out of money before I run out of life’