China Raising Retirement Age

     From NPR:

... Starting next year, China will raise its retirement age for workers, which is now among the youngest in the world's major economies, in an effort to address its shrinking population and aging work force. ...

The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, with the retirement age for men raised to 63 years, and for women to 55 or 58 years depending on their jobs. The current retirement age is 60 for men and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs and 55 for women doing white-collar work. ...

House Social Security Subcommittee Field Hearing

     With no advance notice that I'm aware of the House Social Security Subcommittee held a "field hearing" yesterday in Baton Rouge on the effects of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which reduce Social Security benefits due to the receipt of pensions from work not covered by the FICA tax. Apparently, Louisiana doesn't cover state and local workers under Social Security so this comes up a lot in that state. It's obvious from the opening statements that the Republican leadership of the Subcommittee think these provisions are unfair, which they may well be.

    The merits of the WEP and GPO can be argued but isn't there more than a little hypocrisy in the Republican Party's endless calls to "save Social Security" by increasing the retirement age and subjecting Social Security benefits to means testing at the same time they're acting as if they want to increase Social Security benefits? Isn't it also a sign that they're never going to vote to increase the retirement age or means test Social Security? Those plans will always be highly unpopular.

It Never Stops

     There's an op ed in the New York  Times pushing for increasing Social Security's full retirement age. I think the authors never encounter anyone working at a job requiring standing all day other than employees at Starbucks. The people who clean their offices, repair their cars, care for their elderly relatives and mow their yards are invisible to them. They're under the illusion that everyone is like them and works in an office, which is not true. They don't realize that most people don't make it to full retirement age now and the major reason isn't laziness, but illness. People live longer but bad knees, bad backs, diabetes and many other health conditions still reduce people's ability to work at any job as they age. To say they can just apply for disability benefits is a "let them eat cake" solution. Do they have any idea how brutal Social Security's disability programs are?

    Politically, any further raise in full retirement age isn't going to fly, now or later. You can't win on this. Give it up.

Age At Which Workers Claim Social Security Retirement Benefits

      From The Motley Fool:

• Age 62: 29.3%
• Age 63: 7.4%
• Age 64: 8%
• Age 65: 12.7%
• Age 66: 24.7%
• Age 67: 3.9%
• Age 68: 2.3%
• Age 69: 2.1%
• Age 70 (or above): 9.6%

This Won't Get Enacted But It Shows You Where The GOP's Heart Is

     From The New Republic:

Republicans have claimed over and over again that they are not trying to cut Social Security and Medicare. Heck, Joe Biden got them to agree they would not make cuts to the programs in a memorable verbal maneuver during his State of the Union speech earlier this year.

And yet, the Republican Study Committee (of which some three quarters of House Republicans are members of) just released its desired 2024 budget in which the party seeks to, you guessed it, cut Social Security and Medicare. ...

The proposed budget would effectively make cuts to Social Security by increasing the retirement age for future retirees.  The document seeks to assure people that there would only be “modest adjustments,” but does not list what Republicans think the new retirement age should be.

On Medicare, Republicans propose requiring disabled Americans to wait longer before getting benefits and turning Medicare into a “premium support” system, a long-floated Republican idea that essentially turns the government program into a voucher scheme. ...

FRA For Biden

      From the Motley Fool:

… According to line 20a of the Bidens' 2008 Form 1040, $6,534 in Social Security benefits were recognized. The reason 2008 is so important is because it marked the year Joe Biden turned 66 (the president's birthday is Nov. 20, 1942). In other words, it was the year Joe Biden reached his full retirement age [FRA], which entitled him to 100% of his retired worker benefit. …

     He would have gotten a higher monthly amount if he had waited to age 70. 

Social Security Protests Continue In France

     From CNN:

Clashes erupted in Paris on Monday marking May 1, a traditional day of union-led marches, in the wake of hugely unpopular changes to France’s pension system that were signed into law last month.

A building caught fire at Place de la Nation as the French capital turned into a pitched battle between protesters and riot police.

Around 112,000 people took part in Monday’s protest in the French capital, said Paris Police. It is the second-highest turnout since demonstrations against pension reform began this year, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.

A CNN team on the ground reported chaotic scenes from the protests, having witnessed fireworks and other projectiles thrown at the police who answered with tear gas as they retreated and regrouped. ...

Police charged at protesters under the cover of a water cannon and were confronted with a barrage of fireworks and stones torn from the square. ...

More than 100 policemen were injured in May Day protests, he added, including 19 in Paris with one policeman suffering serious burns from a molotov cocktail. ...

Every Bad Idea For Social Security That The GOP Has Ever Had, In One Document

    Republicans in the House of Representatives have put forth their plan for what that they hope to extort from the President by threatening to put the U.S. government into default on its debts. Here's what their plan would do to Social Security retirement benefits (begins at page 80):

• Implement a new minimum benefit of 15% of the average wage index;
• "Modernize" the Social Security benefit formula, which is a euphemism for reducing future benefits for those now 54 and younger;
• Increase Full Retirement Age to 70 between now and 2040;
• Eliminate the retirement earnings test for those who are under Full Retirement Age;
• Eliminate auxiliary benefits for high wage earners.
  

    The plan also includes changes in disability benefits (begins at page 74):

• Enact a benefits offset experiment that would reduce disability benefits by $1 for every $2 earned (they must not know that this experiment is underway already);
• Allow FICA reductions for employers with high rates of employee retention, which is supposed to help handicapped people stay employed (which would disadvantage manufacturers);
• Require employment in six of the last ten years, instead of five;
• Time limited disability benefits for some recipients; 
• "Update" the grid regulations;
• Make disability benefits contingent on medical improvement (I don't think they meant to say that but that's what they said);
• Prevent those drawing unemployment benefits from drawing disability benefits;
• Eliminate withholding of attorney fees for representing claimants (at least I think that's what they're saying but they only thing clear about it is that they bear a lot of ill will towards attorneys);
• Close the record "after a reasonable period of time";
• Require Social Security to conduct periodic reviews of ALJ decisions, particularly those of "outlier" judges;
• Prohibit reapplications within 12 months of a denial;
• Increase the waiting period for Medicare from 24 months to 60 months;
• Eliminate the ability to apply for both early retirement and disability benefits at the same time;
• Allow employers and employees a reduced FICA rate if the employer provides long term disability benefits.

This Should Come As No Surprise

     From the Associated Press:

Most U.S. adults are opposed to proposals that would cut into Medicare or Social Security benefits, and a majority support raising taxes on the nation’s highest earners to keep Medicare running as is.

The new findings, revealed in a March poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, come as both safety net programs are poised to run out of enough cash to pay out full benefits within the next decade.

Few Americans would be OK with some ways politicians have suggested to shore up the programs: 79% say they oppose reducing the size of Social Security benefits and 67% are against raising monthly premiums for Medicare. ...

Instead, a majority — 58% — support the idea of increasing taxes on households making over $400,000 yearly to pay for Medicare, a plan proposed by President Joe Biden last month. ...

Three-quarters of Americans say they oppose raising the eligibility age for Social Security benefits from 67 to 70, and 7 in 10 oppose raising the eligibility age for Medicare benefits from 65 to 67. ...

While most support increasing taxes on households earning more than $400,000 a year to pay for Medicare, the poll shows a political divide on doing so: 75% of Democrats support the tax but Republicans are closely divided, with 42% in favor, 37% opposed and 20% supporting neither. ...

    So why do Republicans in Congress keep talking about raising full retirement age and keep refusing to consider any changes to FICA? That's what their big money donors want; their rank and file members not so much.

Any Politician Who Supports Raising Full Retirement Age Is Way Out On A Political Limb

     From The Hill:

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans said in a new poll that they would oppose the federal government raising the full retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 70. 

In a new Quinnipiac University poll published Thursday 78 percent of respondents said they would oppose the move, while 17 percent of those surveyed said they would support it. 

In the survey, 77 percent of Republican respondents said they would oppose raising the full retirement age for social security, while 81 percent of Democrat respondents and 75 percent of independent respondents also agree with the same sentiment.  ...