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Ed You're Losing Social Security Benefits

sailingsoul

Student
S
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
47
Social Security has always been Self funded. In that All the money that SS pays out comes from SS contributions. So why does it factor into America cutting benefits is it's not to steel that money for the general fund and balance the budget. Tell Obama to keep SS out of attempts to ballence the budget.

I got this in part from an email,,,

This is disastrously wrong.

Republican pundit David Frum had it right when he said, "The debt ceiling
negotiations have amounted to a succession of retreats and concessions by
President Obama."

We can't be silent and allow President Obama to cave to Republicans, and
put some of the most important and successful programs in our country on
the chopping block.

House Democrats and most Democratic Senators have already said they will
not go along. It is not too late.

I just told President Obama: Protect Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid. I hope you do too.

You can find out more information and easily take action at the link
below.
Click to expand...

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/obama_debt_ceiling/?r_by=23820-4124395-P2QC_Vx&rc=mailto1
 
Social Security can not remain self-funding and continue to pay out in the way it does now. That Social Security must change is an absolute. Either the tax goes up, or benefits are reduced/delayed.

Seems to me that eliminating the income cap on earnings that are taxed would be a good place to start.

As for Medicare and Medicaid - I don't think I agree that they are among the most successful programs in our country.
 
sarge said:
Social Security can not remain self-funding and continue to pay out in the way it does now. That Social Security must change is an absolute. Either the tax goes up, or benefits are reduced/delayed.
Click to expand...

Removing the cap is the best option. Raising the retirement age is just plain stupid. We can't keep young and healthy people employed as it is. So some hobbling arthritic 60-year-old has to go out and compete for a dwindling number of jobs with some energetic you high-school grad? I know for a fact that that totally sucks.

As for Medicare and Medicaid - I don't think I agree that they are among the most successful programs in our country.
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Big problem is that those programs cater for a very small, at-risk pool of beneficiaries. No for-profit company would have them if they could avoid it.

Open it up to a broader, lower-cost pool of beneficiaries and revenue will go up even as the outlay per beneficiarie comes down. They might even be able to deliver a superior level of services at the same cost.
 
I am not sufficiently informed on the details of the programs to argue their effectiveness or sustainability, but as one of those who will be negatively affected in a decade or so if they are cut I feel obliged to say that I am all for cutting them as much as needed if doing so will positively address the deficit and debt issues we are facing.

I have said this to others in person (and to myself when I have not done enough), but we should be angry at our representatives for letting it get to this point but we should be angrier at ourselves for letting them let it get to this point.
 
I agree it should be considered a tax that provides for the general welfare, and that taxing only the first $100,000 (or whatever it is) of income doesn't make any sense.

I also see no reason why anyone should object to means testing for benefits. It should be a safety net. If a person is safe, they ought not get the benefits. (And I have no problem with erring on the side of generosity. It'd still keep it solvent a lot longer, and keep it there for those who really need it.)
 
sarge said:
As for Medicare and Medicaid - I don't think I agree that they are among the most successful programs in our country.
Click to expand...

I don't know. But taken as a whole, I'd say the "welfare state" has indeed been successful. I think it's the reason why crime rates have stayed low despite the recession and this intractable high unemployment. During the Great Depression, crimes rates--especially violent crimes--spiked to crazy high levels.

We're still racking up record low crime rates. (IIRC, New York City's murder rate was an all-time record low within the last couple of years--at least an all-time modern era--say within the last 100 years-- low.)
 
It all depends on if you think Social Security is part of the overall Federal Budget, or if it is separate.

If it is part of the overall budget, then whether Social Security is running a deficit makes no more difference than if the military is running a deficit. We just decide whether or not we want to spend money to maintain the program. It is an expensive program, but the problem it was designed to address is an expensive problem. What do we do with tens of millions of unemployable sick and elderly workers?

If it is separate, there really isn’t a problem. The Social Security program can pay off its debts for decades and when the trust fund runs out of money, it will still be able to pay off 75-80% of what is owed, which will still be more than current retirees are making. Not great, but still better than every plan the GOP has put forward so far.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
I also see no reason why anyone should object to means testing for benefits. It should be a safety net. If a person is safe, they ought not get the benefits. (And I have no problem with erring on the side of generosity. It'd still keep it solvent a lot longer, and keep it there for those who really need it.)
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The problem is the distribution of wealth and where you draw the line for means testing. If you chart out the distribution of wealth in the US from poorest to richest, it looks like a hockey stick. You have a long, realtively straight line from left to right that veers up sharply at the very end.

If you decide that you are going to deny SS benefits to people who make over a million a year, fine, they are not going to be hurt much. But there are not many people who fit that description, so you only deny benefits to a small handful of people and not save much money.

To make significant savings, you would need to lower the means testing bar to the point where more people were affected, and at that point you are cutting into people who might actually need that money. Not to mention making the means testing bar yet another hot potato to toss around in congress until the end of time. Not worth the hassle really. Much easier to just cap benefits.
 
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Upchurch said:
I never really expected to have any social security benefits.
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I'm hoping it will pay for my monthly trip to the casino with my wife. If I don't get any, we'll need to replace that trip with something that doesn't cost anything.
 
leftysergeant said:
Removing the cap is the best option. Raising the retirement age is just plain stupid. We can't keep young and healthy people employed as it is. So some hobbling arthritic 60-year-old has to go out and compete for a dwindling number of jobs with some energetic you high-school grad? I know for a fact that that totally sucks.
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Unless you think the current state of the economy is permanent, we can keep people employed just fine. We can't have people living longer and longer without them working more. I wish we could. I'd like to be able to retire at the current SS age but I know that's not feasible and that it'll be a higher age when I get there.

You can collect SS at 63 now. If you go to college then you don't even start working until 22. And after you turn 63 you have what, 20 years or more of life expectancy? That means people are only doing productive work half their lives. Who pays? The math just doesn't add up.

Keeping the SS age as it is for people that do labor for a living is a different story. I'm all for keeping it the same for them although I don't know how you'd implement that. But for office workers, having retirement at 65-ish equates to giving them a 5-10 year paid vacation at the end of their career until their bodies start to get old enough to start breaking down and they truly need to start slowing their lives down.
 
Number Six said:
Unless you think the current state of the economy is permanent, we can keep people employed just fine. We can't have people living longer and longer without them working more. I wish we could. I'd like to be able to retire at the current SS age but I know that's not feasible and that it'll be a higher age when I get there.
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It was set at 65 because that is about the reasonable age to expect a man to be good for. Don't give me that crap about people living longer. That is because they were able to retire at 65.

People who want to work to 72 are quite welcome to do so.

I just don't want you to drop dead in the middle of the factory floor.

And maybe we might have a more civilized nation now if grandparents were around to teach their grandkids a thing or two about what the country was like before the Republicons went nuts back in the 1980s.
 
leftysergeant said:
Removing the cap is the best option. Raising the retirement age is just plain stupid. We can't keep young and healthy people employed as it is. So some hobbling arthritic 60-year-old has to go out and compete for a dwindling number of jobs with some energetic you high-school grad? I know for a fact that that totally sucks.
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I pay SS taxes on only about 80% of my wages and 65% of my income. I would have no issue with paying on 100% of my wages and none of my pension income - and having my benefits offset by some portion of my total retirement/pension benefits.


Big problem is that those programs cater for a very small, at-risk pool of beneficiaries. No for-profit company would have them if they could avoid it.

Open it up to a broader, lower-cost pool of beneficiaries and revenue will go up even as the outlay per beneficiarie comes down. They might even be able to deliver a superior level of services at the same cost.
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how would increasing the pool of eligible beneficiaries without increasing the contributions make these largely failed programs more solvent?
 
sarge said:
how would increasing the pool of eligible beneficiaries without increasing the contributions make these largely failed programs more solvent?
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You would have healthier people contributing more, even at a lower premium, compared to what they eventually take out.

Say you have twenty construction workers and twenty coal miners in your pool. The eventual per-person outlay for health care is going to be relatively high. Now increase that pool to include twenty high-end retail clerks and twenty bean counters for some financial services business.

Just the average per-person outlays for respiratory problems is going to drop dramaticly.
 
leftysergeant said:
You would have healthier people contributing more, even at a lower premium, compared to what they eventually take out.

Say you have twenty construction workers and twenty coal miners in your pool. The eventual per-person outlay for health care is going to be relatively high. Now increase that pool to include twenty high-end retail clerks and twenty bean counters for some financial services business.

Just the average per-person outlays for respiratory problems is going to drop dramaticly.
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Who the hell was talking about health care? This is about SS.
 
Benefits need to be reduced because they haven't been paid for. If SS taxes had been set aside, general income taxes would have had to be higher. So everyone expecting their benefits now already benefited by having lower taxes throughout their career. The money shouldn't count twice for one generation, while the next gets screwed.
 
Beeyon said:
Benefits need to be reduced because they haven't been paid for. If SS taxes had been set aside, general income taxes would have had to be higher. So everyone expecting their benefits now already benefited by having lower taxes throughout their career. The money shouldn't count twice for one generation, while the next gets screwed.
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And once again, people forget where the trust fund came from. In the 1980's American workers ageed to higher Social Security taxes to create and build up the trust fund to pay for the baby boomer demographic problem. The extra money went to the Federal Government, who issued bonds to be placed in the trust fund.

Saying that the American worker has already benefitted from this arrangement is a distortion at best. Especially since most of the benefit of these lower tax rates seem to have gone to the rich.
 
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