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House Democrats Social Security Fix (1 Viewer)

timschochet said:
We either cut spending, increase the debt, or raise taxes. Which do you prefer? 
increase the debt since it doesn't matter. It's 21T. It's going to 50T. it's going to 100T and beyond. We will still cruise right along regardless of what it is. What is the difference between getting to 50T in 5 years or 10 years? nothing. I mean there cannot be a person left on the planet that can't figure out that the debt will rise every year.

 
I think it’s important to remember that SS is insurance against being poor at retirement. It is not a retirement plan like an IRA or a 401k. If everything goes to hell in your life, SS ensures you you get to eat. 

Thinking of it this way makes a means test reasonable. You don’t collect on insurance for you car or house unless there is an accident, same should be for SS. 

Why shouldn’t we raise the income cap if we need more money to fund the program. Why should the rate not be lowered and apply it to all income equally to collect the required funds. 

Also raising the age to collect is a good way to incite riots. At least it has been in other parts of the world. Life expectancy has not really increased. The reason the average has increased is that more people are living to old age not that old age has increased that much. The high end is still around 85 but more people are getting there. 

 
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I think it’s important to remember that SS is insurance against being poor at retirement. It is not a retirement plan like an IRA or a 401k. If everything goes to hell in your life, SS ensures you you get to eat. 

Thinking of it this way makes a means test reasonable. You don’t collect on insurance for you car or house unless there is an accident, same should be for SS. 

Why shouldn’t we raise the income cap if we need more money to fund the program. Why should the rate not be lowered and apply it to all income equally to collect the required funds. 

Also raising the age to collect is a good way to incite riots. At least it has been in other parts of the world. Life expectancy has not really increased. The reason the average has increased is that more people are living to old age not that old age has increased that much. The high end is still around 85 but more people are getting there. 
I believe the bill had some language like guaranteeing that SS remains just above the poverty line. That seems to be reasonable, no?

 
I believe the bill had some language like guaranteeing that SS remains just above the poverty line. That seems to be reasonable, no?
I think so.  

I have some relatives that only survive because of SS.  The current level seems appropriate to me.  They have what they need to live, but not much more. 

 
Ok, where do we cut it?

I think the issue is always people talk about cutting spending, until its time to cut.
Better way to say it is......people are for spending cuts....unless it is THEIR program getting cut.

Same for taxes.  Most people support tax increases.....when it's on someone else (like the rich). 

To reduce the debt and deficit, we need to cut spending across the board, AND raise taxes on everyone.     Problem is, both the Dems and the GOP give false narratives to their base.  The Dems believe that we can tax the rich to solve our deficit.  The GOP believes that lowering taxes will increase revenue to help pay down the deficit, due to economic expansion.  Both are wrong.

 
increase the debt since it doesn't matter. It's 21T. It's going to 50T. it's going to 100T and beyond. We will still cruise right along regardless of what it is. What is the difference between getting to 50T in 5 years or 10 years? nothing. I mean there cannot be a person left on the planet that can't figure out that the debt will rise every year.
There will be a time where the debt does matter.  We just don't know when that would be. 

 
There will be a time where the debt does matter.  We just don't know when that would be. 
No there won't. Plenty of options to continue along with increased debt. here one: Read about the trillion $ coin. Obama almost enacted it.   One of the ideas floated, Obama said, was having the US Treasury mint a coin worth $1 trillion to pay off a good portion of the debt.  Ya just mint one and say it's worth a trillion...1 trillion in debt..poof...gone. :lmao:

The idea for the Treasury Department to mint a coin and send it to the Federal Reserve in order to pay off the debt was first popularized by Populist Presidential Candidate Bo Gritz in 1992

 
increase the debt since it doesn't matter. It's 21T. It's going to 50T. it's going to 100T and beyond. We will still cruise right along regardless of what it is. What is the difference between getting to 50T in 5 years or 10 years? nothing. I mean there cannot be a person left on the planet that can't figure out that the debt will rise every year.
This kind of thinking always boggles my mind.  Do you think the $21T just sits there and moves up and down depending on how much we add or reduce it by?  Debt service for the $21T is currently like 6% of the federal budget in these times of really low interest rates.  What happens when we hit $30T and interest rates rise 2 or 3 points?  Then the debt service suddenly becomes as large as our military spending and we're in quite the pickle.  The debt must be paid down or our country will slowly bleed off our future prosperity. 

 
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This kind of thinking always boggles my mind.  Do you think the $21T just sits there and moves up and down depending on how much we add or reduce it by?  Debt service for the $21T is currently like 6% of the federal budget in these times of really low interest rates.  What happens when we hit $30T and interest rates rise 2 or 3 points?  Then the debt service suddenly becomes as large as our military spending and we're in quite the pickle.  The debt must be paid down or our country will slowly bleed off our future prosperity. 
That's why Trump was elected - to help us through our bankruptcy.  He's good at it.

 
abbottjamesr said:
Ironically they are in this boat now because they tried to live the high life on a paycheck that did not warrant it.  Now they scrape by on SS.
That's not the case for many retirees i know in the Miami area. Waiters, cooks and housekeepers in the tourism industry, thousands of Cubans who worked in small factories in Hialeah, day laborers in the building industry, and so on. Incomes were not that high 20 and 30 years ago in Miami for many people now in their 80s and 90s. 

 
abbottjamesr said:
I think it’s important to remember that SS is insurance against being poor at retirement. It is not a retirement plan like an IRA or a 401k. If everything goes to hell in your life, SS ensures you you get to eat. 

Thinking of it this way makes a means test reasonable. You don’t collect on insurance for you car or house unless there is an accident, same should be for SS. 

Why shouldn’t we raise the income cap if we need more money to fund the program. Why should the rate not be lowered and apply it to all income equally to collect the required funds. 

Also raising the age to collect is a good way to incite riots. At least it has been in other parts of the world. Life expectancy has not really increased. The reason the average has increased is that more people are living to old age not that old age has increased that much. The high end is still around 85 but more people are getting there. 


I remember when I was 35 and suggested the bolded above to my 65 year old Mom.  She just about blew a gasket.  She paid into it and she was intending to get the promised benefit from it.  Now that I am approaching 50, I'm coming around to her way of thinking, funnily enough.  😉

Anyway, by means testing you are just punishing middle class and upper middle class savers.  The rich won't care if they don't get their SS checks.  But those middle class and upper middle class savers (you know - the salt of the earth - the people who played by all the rules) tend also to be retirement planners as well as savers.  Pensions are mostly gone now, but SS remains as a COLAed "pension" that a person can plan around.  You just screwed up their plans, and reneged on a multi-decade deal they had been going along with.

So I guess if your means test doesn't bite until say $10M of net worth, I'm OK with that.  No less.  Go bother the rich (hint: capital gains tax increase) or adjust the SS retirement ages.  Leave the middle class alone for once.

 
I remember when I was 35 and suggested the bolded above to my 65 year old Mom.  She just about blew a gasket.  She paid into it and she was intending to get the promised benefit from it.  Now that I am approaching 50, I'm coming around to her way of thinking, funnily enough.  😉

Anyway, by means testing you are just punishing middle class and upper middle class savers.  The rich won't care if they don't get their SS checks.  But those middle class and upper middle class savers (you know - the salt of the earth - the people who played by all the rules) tend also to be retirement planners as well as savers.  Pensions are mostly gone now, but SS remains as a COLAed "pension" that a person can plan around.  You just screwed up their plans, and reneged on a multi-decade deal they had been going along with.

So I guess if your means test doesn't bite until say $10M of net worth, I'm OK with that.  No less.  Go bother the rich (hint: capital gains tax increase) or adjust the SS retirement ages.  Leave the middle class alone for once.
I agree with you.  The means test should be at a level where the SS payments would not be a meaningful part of your retirement plan.  I don't have any issue with a $10M net worth if it included your residence.

 
I agree with you.  The means test should be at a level where the SS payments would not be a meaningful part of your retirement plan.  I don't have any issue with a $10M net worth if it included your residence.
I'd be fine with this, but I don't think this would get you even 1% of the savings you'd need.  Keep in mind, the reason the cap at $132,900 exists is that benefits are not paid above that.  Therefore, benefits are not totally proportional to earnings especially for high earners.  So you would only capture a very small slice of people, and the benefit checks they'd be forgoing are no larger than someone in the middle class.

 
Oprah recently turned 65. I wonder if she went down to her local SS Office..haha. There’s probably a way to claim your benefits online now tho..

But anyways, the main argument I’ve heard against raising the cap is that it would screw over small business owners. 

Furthermore, let us remember that social security is not a pension plan. It is a social safety net. You can barely have any work history your entire life and they’ll still give you the minimum amount, around $675/month. 

Also, there’s a ton of young(ish) people who collect disability, which routinely borrows from the SS fund. 

A lot of people don’t realize this, but when Bill Clinton kicked all those poor people off welfare in the 90s a lot of them went on disability. 

 
Well if we fully repeal the estate tax, they’re sure to trickle that money down to the little guys. And if things get really bad, rich people are usually pretty cool about letting you use their guest house if you lose yours. But hey, if you don’t like being poor, you should have been rich instead, it’s way better.

 
While you guys have been arguing about the rich, no one comments on this...Larson’s legislation would also raise the payroll tax by 1.2 percentage points on both employees and employers, phasing in the change over 24 years.  

That's a huge hit for the poor and lower middle class and small business.  Of course big business will just cut pay increases to cover it so most will take a 2.4% hit.

 
While you guys have been arguing about the rich, no one comments on this...Larson’s legislation would also raise the payroll tax by 1.2 percentage points on both employees and employers, phasing in the change over 24 years.  

That's a huge hit for the poor and lower middle class and small business.  Of course big business will just cut pay increases to cover it so most will take a 2.4% hit.
Can they cut them much more?  At the company I work for the standard raise is <2% the last couple years.  This is in a supposedly great economy.  I effectively make less today than 3 years ago.  

 
No there won't. Plenty of options to continue along with increased debt. here one: Read about the trillion $ coin. Obama almost enacted it.   One of the ideas floated, Obama said, was having the US Treasury mint a coin worth $1 trillion to pay off a good portion of the debt.  Ya just mint one and say it's worth a trillion...1 trillion in debt..poof...gone. :lmao:

The idea for the Treasury Department to mint a coin and send it to the Federal Reserve in order to pay off the debt was first popularized by Populist Presidential Candidate Bo Gritz in 1992
This has actually been tried before In history several times. The result has always been economic catastrophe. 

 
While you guys have been arguing about the rich, no one comments on this...Larson’s legislation would also raise the payroll tax by 1.2 percentage points on both employees and employers, phasing in the change over 24 years.  

That's a huge hit for the poor and lower middle class and small business.  Of course big business will just cut pay increases to cover it so most will take a 2.4% hit.
So the average American citizen can look forward to getting the same treatment that new hire Federal Employees are already getting (to a far lesser degree).  Static benefits with an increasing cost to fund those benefits.  Welcome aboard.

And we should all be clear, the employee will pay the additional 1.2%, and will also pay the employer's extra 1.2% as well, since the employer will definitely pass that cost along in the form of suppressed raises.  So, an additional 2.4%, upping it from 6.2% to 8.6%, for each voter.

 

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