House Republicans proposed raising the age for receiving Social Security benefits

Would it? For producers?

It would, for everyone. For one thing, nobody would be looking down the barrel of means-testing.

Why shouldn’t it be means tested?

Indeed, it is an insurance program.
It was also designed when companies had pensions, so SS could subsidize pensions and savings.

We should remove the SS tax cap, and raise benefits as pensions are basically gone today.

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It would lift the burden of benefit cuts from other groups and I don’t believe that’s how austerity should be done. Ideally, the number of people who feel the bite of benefit cuts should be as large as possible.

Who deserves to keep their full benefits while other people’s benefits get cut? I can’t think of anyone who isn’t partially responsible for the state of Social Security. Even apathy has a punishable cost in a representative democracy.

People that bummed off the system.

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What a nice gift to Democrats. You can’t go after the blue collar vote and be the ones that tells them they need to work longer.
We are giving away fortunes to Europe, Israel and paying for student loans. Go after that before people’s retirement.
It’s basically whether you want to remain a minority party forever.
People don’t want their cities taken over by illegal aliens, but they don’t want to work a couple of years extra even more.
Sure, we may just run out of money. But if Republicans don’t take control of this government now, there won’t be a country.
Trump needs to come out strongly against this now.

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“Politicians mess with this topic at their peril. Evidence strongly suggests that it was loose talk on this subject that cost the Republicans their “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-gop-undermines-trump-with-call-for-2-7-trillion-in-social-security-and-medicare-cuts/ar-BB1ki9uF

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They would never touch people who are currently receiving Social Security. That is part of their base.

They would screw over future retirees… but not current ones.

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Where it is really broken is so many have learned how to game the system with so called disabilities.

Some disabilities no doubt are real whereas a goodly number are just nonsense.

Emotional “disabilities” and such. :roll_eyes:

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Life expectancy was in the high 50’s for the average male and the 60s for the average female in the 1930s, when this program was created. Sure there are always people who break the bell curve, And Social Security isn’t a savings account. This is why you never get a balance statement from Social Security, only an estimated benefit statement. You aren’t getting any interest on “your” money, because you don’t actually have any of “your” money on deposit with Social Security.

Yes I do. 40 years worth.

I made myself my own pensioner by steadily funding my IRA, 401K and 403B throughout my working career.

I was often tapped by my employer to present at new-hire orientations. My message: “Even though it seems like you can’t afford to put 6% into your 401K, in reality because of the company match you can’t afford NOT to do it. If you can’t do the full 6% now,(which is the max the company matches), then do 1% this year. When you get your next raise, increase the contribution to 2%, and repeat until you get to 6%…”

Sadly we’ve become a culture that expects the government to take care of them. The “How-will-people-survive-in-retirement” argument against SS modifications is a strong indicator of that cultural shift.

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Sorry, but that was the con job sold to make the masses think they were getting something, when FDR created this program. Its real purpose was to get a bunch of additional dollars from the public that the US Government could spend that didn’t look like a tax increase. There is no account at the Social Security Administration with your name on it. There are no funds at the Social Security Administration. The dollars taken out of your pay are sent to the General Fund of the Treasury. When you start getting benefits (not withdraws) under the program, those funds will come from the General Fund of the Treasury, not from the Social Security Administration.

Note that the proposals aren’t outright screwings. They are shifts that are far enough down the line to allow those who will be impacted to make adjustments now. We’ve been making adjustments (to wit, increases in spending) for many years, and those have built a culture expecting entitlements. Now it’s time to crank the cultural shift to a program that can be sustainable.

It’s in a lock box, right?

It is screwing them.

By making adjustments to future retirees and not current ones it means that current workers will pay more for less benefits than current retirees had to for theirs.

The program can be made sustainable by other means… but screwing current workers is the most palatable for the GOP because it doesn’t harm a good part of their base which is Baby Boomers.

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Of course, I reject your opinion.

How is making people pay more for less not screwing them?

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It’s un-screwing (a mere half turn, but unscrewing nonetheless) a screwed system.

PS: I don’t share your entitlement philosophy.