The committee’s chairman Kevin Hern emphasized in the budget that “we cannot be clearer: we WILL NOT adjust or delay retirement benefits for any senior in or near retirement.”
I’m disturbed by how easily he says that. Benefits for current recipients stay untouched, while people further away from retirement get to look forward to working longer for less benefit.
Ultimately, it’s the latter’s money. I don’t think it’s morally justifiable to craft a solution that burdens them one-sidedly with all the austerities.
Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said that “we have to be mindful of people who really do hard work, hard labor, their whole lives, and who die sooner than those of us who are privileged enough to do work that is not as taxing on our bodies and our physical well-being.”
Interesting comment. So raise the age for the privileged and lower it for the oppressed. 70 if you program in a cubicle. 65 (or 60) for miners.
He has a point, the oppressed need them some equity.
Social Security is broken. There are people who will retire at 62 and will be collecting into their 90’s. It was never intended to offer 30+ years of benefits. Major changes will have to be made.
If major changes need to be made, I’d rather see the automatic austerities kick in. Everyone has been aware of those measures for many decades. That would be more justifiable than crafting new solutions designed to benefit this or that group.
I could rephrase that. What was the life expectancy when the law was passed? And it’s highly unlikely that today’s life expectancy was considered at that time.
A cookie cutter solution would keep discontent to a minimum.
Guys sweating in kitchens would be pretty discontent if their indoor job retired later than guys walking around outdoors with clipboards. The amount of nasty that will be uncorked by uneven austerity isn’t worth the benefit.
Even worse, givernment has expanded the payout of Social Security with all sorts of extras like supplemental security, expanded survivor benefits, college grants, expanded disability, and on and on.
I have proposed a way to replace Social Security entirely by having the worker put his 6% into his own account rather than giving it to Social Security.
If someone starting at age 20 puts away 6% per year, and gets an average 5% growth on the account, (no matter what rate of growth in his annual salary), after 45 years (so age 65) his account will be roughly 10x his ending salary. So a guy ending with as hypothetical $50,000 salary at retirement would have about a half mil nest egg. If that earns 5% interest, he would draw about 2000 per month from it, no matter how long he lives. And an even bigger benefit of this to the individual (and his survivors) is that the nestegg would be his estate to pass to his survivors. No estate goes to survivors from today’s SS program.
And almost reflexively people react to proposals of private retirement accounts with deflections about losses in the stock market. But that 5% growth could be done with government bonds.
