From Joseph Chamie writing for The Hill:
Despite an expected backlash, vocal objections and possible threats, it’s time to raise America’s Social Security retirement age to 70 years with no early retirement option.
There are important reasons for America to raise Social Security’s retirement age to 70 and do away with early retirement with reduced benefits, which about half of the recipients are currently choosing before reaching full retirement age.
The first has to do with the fact that Social Security is projected to be insolvent by 2035. In its 2022 annual report, the Social Security Board of Trustees concluded that if no changes are made, the program will not be able to meet its financial responsibilities by 2035.
A second reason for raising the retirement age to 70 centers on the increasing life expectancies of Americans that have occurred over the recent past. …
I think that once they get control of the House of Representatives next year the Republicans should bring this proposal to a vote.
13 comments:
Typical thought process of a old rich white man who hasn't done any physical work in decades and probably never. The rest of us get TIRED before 70.
The solution should be bipartisan. A combination of increased tax rate and tweaking other provisions. I don't think doing away with early retirement will garner much support even among Republicans. Trouble is getting both sides to even agree to work it out.
So, in a nutshell, they want the elderly to die before they have to pay out benefits. I get the insolvency, however, there are other ways than making people work until they're 70. That being said, if they're good at finances, they should be able to retire on savings until SSA kicks in, but we know that is getting increasingly harder to save for retirement. I'm torn on this one. 70 year old workers just don't sit will with me. It can be difficult to find jobs if one is in their 60's...and even 50's sometimes. There just has to be another way. d:-/
I don't believe those GOP lies about Social Security likely to become insolvent. There is a huge trust fund of trillions of dollars. They need to raise the cap on wages for Social Security due to inflation etc.
Joseph Chamie's articles, whether in The Hill or any other publication... are about populations. They are as apolitical as you can get. What he is saying is, SOMETHING must be done to keep SSA solvent. He gives one solution, albeit, a not particularly popular one. But, if you have played with the numbers, you quickly realize that doing several little things go a long way. Slight increases in payments, slightly increasing the cap, etc... all would collectively fix the issue. Of course, that require a divided vountry and Congress to work together.
The House will have its hands full investigating Biden, his administration and family members. But if there's time to look at Social Security, the House should consider changing it to solely a disability program. Advanced age alone should not be enough. Look at Biden or Chuck Grassley.
@7:13 Eliminating early retirement and raising the age to 70 is not a "apolitical" solution. It is the solution of deeply conservative/libertarian types, and has been for decades. When other less dramatic and far more popular solutions exist, you have to wonder why Joseph Chamie choose the option that would prevent millions of blue collar working Americans from ever collecting SSA benefits. Compared to white collar workers, life expectancy has not increased meaningfully for this group of people in the last 10 years. In fact there was a decrease in life expectancy found for this group a few years back (mainly attributed to "deaths of despair").
How many 69 year old construction workers or tradesman have you encountered? If blue collar workers cannot obtain any form of retirement before age 70, this will obviously have the effect of shifting millions of people to SSDI--which will in turn stress the funding for this program...and then these same people will argue we have to change the disability rules to make it harder to obtain.
I remember how I limped up to my full retirement of age of 66 and couldn't face another day of totally competitive employment. My work was sedentary, just wear and tear on your nerves. The average life expectancy has not risen overall. I work now, but I can adjust it as needed. Also, this raising the retirement age does not consider people who do hard physical labor, workers that we need, but don't need to throw away when they can't do that work. Raising the cap is still the best solution. Get money from where it is.
They'll try and use the debt limit as leverage rather than bring it to a vote. Not going to happen either way.
I said his articles are apolitical, not the solution he chose. He worked for the UN...not exactly the bastion of conservative thinking. His solution is based upon a current revenue projection. In other words, unless you increase revenues, you have to cut benefits. His article is his opinion on how best to do that.
Personally, I think some combination of cuts and revenue increases would be most palatable. However, the political will to do ANYTHING is clearly lacking. If you REALLY wanted to cut benefits, just doing NOTHING is the simplest, least politically toxic, thing to do.
As for whether his solution is political... You could argue that the choice of toilet paper, or use at all, is a political decision. Many people probably wouldn't think of it that way.
The best solution is just to remove the wage limit on taxes. Then cap max benefits at the current highest amount. Boom. Problem solved
@5:24 There are many proposed solutions to fixing this problem that do not require any cuts in benefits. For example, to make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, Congress could raise the tax rate from 6.2% to 8.1%. According to current actuarial projections, this would fix the problem until 2095. Alternatively, Congress could close three-quarters of the long-term deficit by immediately abolishing the maximum taxable wage base (currently $147,000), thus subjecting all wages to taxation. Or they could raise the full retirement age to 68. This would close one-seventh of the long-term actuarial deficit.
The extreme changes this article is calling for go way overboard. Why would he pick the most unrealistic political solution imaginable. Even hardcore GOP conservatives know it would be political suicide to eliminate early retirement, while raising the full retirement age. It completely changes the purpose of the program to support only white collar workers who are able to work until age 70. The article also parrots other right wing talking points about people simply choosing not to work at age 62, despite being perfectly capable of doing so. He cites no evidence for this, and just claims people would somehow be financially better off if they were forced to work until age 70. That is deeply political claim that very few economists would back up. This is not an unstudied subject. All these ideas come directly from right wing think tanks, but there are plenty of alternative solutions. Search on google for few minutes and you will find them.
@ 5:29: You Nailed It!!
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