1. Define very clearly what SS is. We need to be clear that it's an agreement between the working class and the retired class that says "if you are too old to work and you can't afford to live, we will take care of you"
2. Get rid of the SS tax cap. You don't pay any SS tax above 180k ish, which seems silly. Get rid of the cap and let every earned dollar participate in the program. It doesn't feel like that hard of a sell.
3. You don't get SS payments if you already have enough income. See #1, the agreement. We are agreeing to take care of you if you need it. Many, many retired persons do not need their SS income. Even if you paid SS tax your entire life, see #1. It is not an agreement that you will receive the money you put in later in your life.
Those aren't popular ideas but they are simple and easy to understand for everyone.
[1] https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/
[2] https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialS...
Revenues -> Eliminate Tax Max without Benefit Credit (parent's #2) closes the gap by 68%.
Benefit Formula -> Slow Benefit Growth for Top Half of Earners (closest option to parent's #3) closes the gap by 41%.
Together these keep the program solvent indefinitely.
In Australia you have a universal Age Pension which is a backstop against extreme hardship set at the equivalent of US$20.5k, but your rate of Age Pension reduces linearly with income levels between US$9k and US$44k.
Similarly, the rate of Age Pension reduces linearly with asset levels between US$213k and US$474k, but you don't count your own home in that.
The private retirement savings system is similar to the 401(k) and Roth 401(k) except the employer doesn't typically do a match, they are just legally obligated to pay 12% of your salary. You can then contribute an extra US$20k as an income tax reduction or pretty much however much you want after-tax.
Inside the superannuation system, the gains are only taxed at 15%.
In general, it's a pretty perfect system that just leans a little too far towards being a rich person's wealth preservation tool, but overall it enables self-sufficiency while also preventing real poverty in old age.
No. Frankly getting a bit of a boost to my income at the end of the year is one of the few things I have left to look forward to. The program at best will pay out $0.75 on the dollar of benefits. How much is enough? Do more with less.
Reminder that infrastructure is ~3% of the budget, the military is ~13%. Almost all of the rest are benefits, either health or money, for old people or various poverty reduction schemes. Or debt.
Social Security was made when there were ~130:1 worker:retiree ratio, now its closer to 3:1 and getting worse. The budget is largely an exercise in transferring money from the younger to the older. Unlike when SS started and the older generations were the poorest, right now they are the richest, so its an exercise in making the richest generations a bit richer at the expense of the current working generations.
Since debt is now a large part of the US budget, this represents the retiree generation (again, the richest generation!) borrowing from even farther in the future to give themselves more money.
There is no solution that doesn't confront this. The old are eating the young at an accelerated pace. People will say things like "But seniors are on a fixed income" as if that didn't represent most people, more or less, or justify the sheer scale of the wealth transfer.
The most realistic solution is that we would have to stop all kinds of benefits to already-rich people and make it solely and exclusively on poverty reduction for the retirees that are in fact poor.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S
The situation is similar to what it was in the late 1980s, and it can mostly likely be managed with the same level of spending restraints we saw in response to that.
Starting with Reagan, taxes cuts corporations and the rich has been the main driver of the debt. And I will add to that, falling wages for the middle and lower classes based upon inflation.
https://www.pgpf.org/article/six-charts-that-show-how-low-co...
I found the Concord Coalition [0], and their sister organization Concord Action [1].
I haven't done enough research to endorse them, but I'm just saying: they exist and this is their issue.
Bad headline. No biscuits.
How about reversing the Trump Tax cuts or clawing back the tax holiday for bringing back profits hidden overseas.
The result of “fiscal restraint” amounts to acceptance of premature death for millions. Likely acceptable to a country that has accepted excess COVID deaths and support for genocides in West Asia, East & Central Africa, and South America. I only hope that boomers turn to anarchist resistance and disruption.
My question is this: If I can’t get some or most it, why can’t I steer the money to where I believe the money ought to go?
Since the population pyramid has not worked that way, you will simply have a worse time, and younger people even worse, unless you can convince the people after to take on even more debt.
"Children are the retirement plan" has been true all along, only obfuscated. It would have been more sensible if social security payouts were contingent on how much tax revenue your children made, rather than the current model.
Current workers pay for current retirees. There is no account anywhere with your name on it earmarked for your retirement.
It was enacted with lawmakers well knowing this - it was simply marketed in such a way to make it politically possible to enact and keep around long-term. If it were pitched as an additional tax and spend welfare program it’d have never gotten off the ground to begin with.
Without your dollars going in today, current retirees would not be receiving meaningful benefits - as their contributions largely went towards those retired while they were working. The whole idea is more of a social contract between generations than anything else.
The US Government is an enormous welfare program with a military on the side.
Whenever people talk about the rich paying their fair share, they simply fail to grasp the enormity of the problem. There is no taxing your way out of this problem.
Society's expectations have far outpaced our fiscal strength.
So, yeah, it's "separate" spending in a sense, but it's not totally in its own sandbox.
Interest costs in the 80s spiked because high rates were applied to a much smaller debt base. Today we have the opposite problem: rates that are high compared to the 2010s are now rolling onto a massively larger stock of debt. We’ve only just started to refinance that debt at the new levels, so the full impact hasn’t even shown up yet. We are still seeing significant inflation (meaning rates still have upwards room to grow), beginning signs of an economic pullback, are beginning to see signs of a Fed unwilling to raise rates sufficiently due to the impact on the fiscal environ, etc.
If those investors are satisfied with a return to a late-80s fiscal posture, then great. But if they're worried that spending would just creep up again once the pressure is off, they might "demand" further cuts.
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/a-...
The author took the CBO's budget projections and adjusted them for "false sunsets", i.e. the tax cuts that were supposed to expire before they were extended, and the fake spending cuts written into the law that will never happen, i.e. the FRA.
so... austerity? Like the article suggests?
GDP % is only relevant if we are politically able to raise taxes.
I think it’s very important to use GDP as a denominator, because otherwise you’ll be stuck crying wolf, saying “debt always keeps going up” even during the good times.
There are a lot of people who simply don’t believe that the government budget needs a trim right now, because people have been continuously saying there was a debt crisis even when the financial situation was relatively favorable.
Because measuring things against GDP like this is completely meaningless.
If you use your brain for even the slightest moment it would be completely obvious that the sum total amount of a debit is a huge deal because of scale of the interest.
Why is "just pay current recipients enough to get them to STFU and phase out the program" not an option?
It's not like anyone under 60 didn't at least have some expectation SS might go tits up. Younger genx on down have been raised to expect nothing so they won't be too sad. They'll be happy to stop paying if anything.
even many in my Gen Z cohort would be pissed, although i would be celebrating
I think that's filter bubble speaking. People who aren't ideologically in favor of entitlements would likely be mildly for or against. People who are ideologically against entitlements would consider it a good thing.
Especially if they amount they're going to be paid is going from $LOTS to zero.
Don’t think this is “filter bubble” as I don’t interact with many Gen Xers and the ones I do likely skew skeptical of SS.
Some approaches I was mulling over:
1. The easiest way is to dilute SS without pushing the years down even further is to remove the required COLA adjustments.
It's probably the easiest; also the least imaginative; and may be too slow.
2. The other is what the other poster mentioned: Real social security really comes down to your kids; and this is what I think should be the basis for a "new deal".
This has to be done very carefully--I can see so many ways this can be abused--but longer-term I think giving some sort of tax break or even tax credit--based on the social security numbers of the parents--allocated by the parent(s).
For the family that can't do it full-time, they can then use that credit or offset to hire some help.
Thoughts?
Edit: I went through this but with hired help. It was both necessary and awful; and I wish I had an option to help my parents directly full-time, but I didn't have the means at the time (I suppose I still don't).
Edit 2: Fixing social security alone doesn't address the wider fiscal problem. It's almost a drop in the bucket. Healthcare is the problem.
I mean the elderly in 50 years time, when Gen Zers and younger have to deal with the same question.
There’s no debt being paid; money is simply taken from Peter, and money is simply given to Paul.
It’s not a retirement program, it’s retirement subsidization.
If you are willing to concede the above, I'll reclassify it as a proper "subsidy" insomuch as it was a law that was passed, and it is a clear act by the government to incentivize activity "X". At which point my discussion will quickly turn to "Holy shit, why are we still trying to empire build in the year of our Lord 2025? Shouldn't we have changed this by now?"
If not... Still seeing it as a Ponzi. A fundamentally degenerate and unstable financial model, intended only to benefit the people who have been in it the longest solely for the purpose of self-enrichment. Well branded, mind; who doesn't want Social Security? But a Ponzi in essence nevertheless.