From Think Advisor:
The House passed legislation Monday to update the language used by the Social Security Administration to describe when American workers can claim their retirement benefits. …
The Claiming Age Clarity Act, sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., changes the terminology in materials produced by the Social Security Administration. …
The bill, which passed the House Ways and Means Committee in September, states that the agency must use minimum monthly benefit age instead of early eligibility age. …
SSA must also use standard monthly benefit age instead of "full retirement age" and "normal retirement age." …
9 comments:
Surely this will save the OASI trust fund. 🙄
Game changing legislation from the Republican lead House of Representatives. How about tackling real issues like extending Obamacare and keeping the government open passed the end of January 2026 deadline?
This legislation falls under the category of what can be accomplished during a taxpayer paid vacation during a shutdown.
How does this clarify anything? "Early eligibility/retirement age" is much clearer than "minimum monthly benefit age." No professional tangentially connected to SSA is going to adopt this language, so it will simply sow more confusion. We also do not need to rename the hearing operations division every 10 years for no reason.
It reminds me of the critique of "woke" left a few years back when they were insisting on changing the meaning of words or inventing new words. None of this linguistic tinkering helps people in the real world.
Oh yeah, these new terms will clarify the retirement eligibility ages, said NO ONE. Normal retirement age? What does that even mean. What a waste of time, money, amd resources.
Behavioral psychology research, in part done by SSA, shows the existing names subtly nudge people to claim earlier than they want. 'Minimum benefit age' clearly implies a permanently lower benefit while 'Earliest eligibility age' sounds like getting in line first, which is good. Age 70 doesn't even have a name - a lot of people don't know you can maximize your benefit by delaying claiming until 70.
Nope this is a good thing, backed by research, and it matches how other retirement systems label their ages. It does help people in the real world make decisions without subtly pushing them to do one thing or another. Agreed on renaming the hearings division, though, geesh. Just call it Hearings.
It's not expected to. And don't call me Shirley. :)
How subtle? Within a statistical margin of error?
The syntax is not any clearer, as "Minimum" will be read by many as qualifying "benefit age," not "benefit amount"...so the implication you are drawing does not clearly match the plain meaning of the phrase.
My bigger gripe is with the time spent on these type of "minimally" incremental projects. More effort should be spent internally on simplifying the complex regulatory structure that takes years for SSA employees to master. The mistakes that SSA employees are making are far more consequential to far more people.
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