From Michael Hiltzik writing for the Los Angeles Times:
Back in my school days, a “C” grade was a certification of rank mediocrity. That’s the right way to think about a recent scorecard on which the U.S. retirement system scored an inexcusably deficient C+.
That grade placed the U.S. behind Netherlands, Iceland and Israel (all A’s); and Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland (all solid B’s or B+). If you’re looking for bragging rights, the U.S. came in about even with France.
The scores come to us from the business consulting firm Mercer, which ranked 47 national pension systems for its Global Pension Index on standards such as adequacy, sustainability (including the reliability of funding) and integrity (such as the regulation of private pension providers). ...
Among the particular shortcomings of the American system identified by the Mercer team is that it leaves too many workers out in the cold, including gig workers and lower-income blue-collar employees. ...
But if you’re hoping that things will improve for American retirees in the near future, the accession of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) to the post of House speaker should give you pause. Johnson is a long-term advocate of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits through changes such as raising the retirement and eligibility ages for the programs.
He also has advocated scrutinizing the cost of those programs through a “bipartisan debt commission” that inevitably would place them in the deficit-reduction cauldron along with other spending. After his rise to the speaker’s chair Wednesday, Johnson immediately promised to create this panel. ...
Yeah, but we’re kicking all those countries’ butts in mass shootings.
ReplyDeleteLess people, less benefits needed
DeletePerhaps adding some private investment into the mix would help?
ReplyDeleteYeah! Double down on what put us on this downward slide. That’ll surely fix the problem.
Delete@2:21 Private investment takes the "Security" out of Social Security because then the beneficiary can lose it, leaving them unable to meet their basic needs. The program's purpose is to prevent that from happening. It turns the gamble of private investing into the security of a stream of income to help retirees meet their basic needs.
ReplyDeleteA vast majority of Americans favor it the way it is, and politicians who go against that tend to do poorly. This blog and the press does the public a service by pointing out the names of politicians and certain moneyed interests who go against the public will on this point.
The problem is that SSA retirement was never ever ever intended to be the only retirement income. I do not factor in any money from SSA into retirement calculations, what the government giveth the government taketh away.
ReplyDelete