an honest question

[melm00se]

no hidden agenda or meanings.

when social security came into existence in 1935, the life expectancy for men and women were 59.9 and 63.9 years respectively with a retirement age of 65.

fast forward to today, the life expectancy is 74 and 79 years, yet the retirement age (for full benefits) has only increased 1 to 2 years.

the math just doesn't work out from an actuarial standpoint.

so how does the system sustain itself without an adjustment in

- retirement age
- benefit
- tax rate
???

[bbinacan]

1. It doesn't sustain without a change. n/t

[TheIdiot]

2. It doesn't...

and anyone who tells us differently is blowing smoke.

[Iris]

8. or not....

http://pol.moveon.org/ssmyths/?id=22141-17295776-EfCy5px&t=1

[texastoast]

3. Take up the limit to $200,000

The most taxpayer friendly way to do it.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

4. And population in 1935 and today?

[bbinacan]

5. And the age of the population today?

Think those receiving benefits vs. those paying SS taxes.

[TheKentuckian]

6. Go back and examine life expectancy past 65 and adjust for more people living to adulthood

And you'll likely see the increase to 67 about covers the real increase in expectancy.

Ponder how much the additional people in the work force permanently reduces wages across a lifetime, which reduces revenues and we'll have the roots of a conversation.

It's a counter-productive effort that's real goal is to reduce taxes for the wealthy, to my eyes but if we're using the same numbers and not looking at a top line number without looking deeper then at least we can talk.

[doc03]

7. It doesn't, either we have to pay more or expect less.

My mother never worked outside the home. My dad retired in 1974 and drew SS until his death in 1989 (15 years). My mother is still alive and collecting SS from my dad's employment for another (21 years). So there you have one wage earner that has received benefits for a total of (36 years). My mother lives in a senior citizens apartment complex and there are many other widows that have been living off of SS for that long and longer.

[doc03]

9. Here is my own example. I retired this year at 62 if I take what me

and my employers paid into SS and divide it by my monthly benefit I would get the entire principle back in 7 years and 8 months. If I would be lucky enough to make it to my average life expectancy I would double what I paid in.

[mudplanet]

10. Quite simply, we pay more. SS deductions have been adjusted upwards

all along.

But more importantly, why has the mission of SS been changed/perverted? SS was designed to keep people out of penury, especially in their old age. But in order to satisfy conservatives it was changed so that everyone, regardless of their assets and income, receives SS. We've got millionaires in this country getting unemployment and millionaires getting SS. It's just plain bullshit IMHO.

It was never intended to do that. It was intended as a way to keep poor people from living/dying in poverty in their old age. Period.

My problem is that I don't see SS as being used nearly broadly enough as a tool to equalize incomes. Why should rich people only pay SS on a specific amount of their income, and why should investment income not be subject to SS? Hell, my father had an investment income in his retirement upwards of $4000 a month, and he still received SS income to the tune of $1700 a month. He was a conservative but even he thought it was ridiculous.

There are a lot of ways to make SS solvent.

[doc03]

12. That is just wrong, a person pays into SS up to an income of

$106,000 and you are going to deny those people from getting SS. The day that happens will be the death of SS. I worked a fairly well paying Union job with a pension, so you are going to deny me a SS check because I get a pension and sacrificed to pay into a 401k, I don't think so! SS was meant to provide a minimum income to retirees. I have attended several retirement seminars, retirement income is like a three legged stool, you get a small check from SS that is just barely adequate to survive, you have your pension and your savings. The same goes for unemployment it isn't a welfare program either if a person gets laid off from a $1,000,000 a year job he is entitled to get an unemployment check. If you have a lifestyle accustomed to making $1,000,000 a year and you lose your job you still have to pay your bills. What you are talking is means testing, if someone worked their ass off on overtime or maybe worked two jobs and when they retire you are going to say you don't need SS you get a good pension and investment income. I know lots of people that I worked with that made the same income as I did and drank it up, gambled it up or bought a new car every 3 years. They cashed out their pensions and 401ks or never paid into one and you are going to pay them SS and tell me to take a hike you make enough money you don't need SS.

[mudplanet]

13. Yes. I would deny an individual an income from SS if that inidividual had

an income above a certain level. Period. No I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Neither did the people in the FDR admin that designed the program.

Exactly as you say, "SS was meant to provide a minimum income to retirees." Not to provide additional income to already comfortable people.

It was designed to keep people from living/dying in abject poverty. The fact that you and your friends are lucky enough to have retirement savings AND pensions indicates, to me, that you are a perfect example of people that do not need to be receiving SS. In fact, I'd say you are one of the reasons SS is having problems. Most of my friends live on SS alone. They worked their whole lives but never earned enough to pay into "401K" programs and weren't fortunate enough to work in occupations that offered pensions. They aren't drunks or degenerate gamblers, either.

Yea, if you have an income of over $2K a month, take a hike, you don't need SS.

And fucking millionaires can do exactly what they tell others to do that don't have an income - learn to live within their means. Sell the Mercedes and the five bedroom house and live like normal people. Fuck their country club and golf club memberships and their $750 a month car note. Unemployment should be designed to keep people from becoming homeless when they lose their jobs, not supplement the income of millionaires.

[doc03]

14. SS is not, and never was intended to be a welfare program

and if you make it one that will be the end of it. If you think the American people are going to pay over 6% of their income into SS all their lives and not be able to get anything from it you are nuts. So if I say get an income of $1200 per month from a pension or a 401k I paid into all my working life I don't get SS. I worked 40 f----g years in a steel mill, worked weekends, turn work,
exposed to every carcinogen known to man and worked most holidays. Many people my age didn't want to work in a mill and get dirty so they worked a nice clean day job with weekends off that paid half of what I made and you think they should get a SS check of $1200 per month and I should get nothing. I could have had me a job at the hardware store working 8-4, had weekends off, all the holidays off like everyone else then retire and live probably ten more years than I will now because I was never exposed to the hazards in a mill. What do you have against someone that tries to better themselves?
I don't have any problems with millionaires, I grew up with a few that are millionaires now and they didn't steel the money they worked hard and deserve it.

[mudplanet]

17. Read a book, doc03. Try something on The New Deal.

You don't want to pay 6% into SS, fine. Call it something else. What do you get back for it? The assurance that if you become disabled at 32 you won't end up both disabled and homeless. And the assurance that if your parent's investments in the stock market go south, or they discover that their pension has been stolen by some thief in a three piece suit on Wall Street, they won't be homeless or living in abject poverty. Or that if you, god forbid, have a child who has Down's Syndrome, that child will have at least some kind of income to live on if and when you die. And if your pension gets ripped off and Wall St. crashes again and your 401k becomes worthless, you'll still have an income of some sort so you won't starve. That was the point of SS in the first place. It got changed along the way to make it more palatable to people like you.

I wish we'd had steel mills in my town instead of seasonal work fishing for oysters and shrimp or working 48 hours a week for minimum wage with no overtime in the god forsaken concrete prefabrication plant in that Mississippi sun. I'm expecting the skin cancer to kick in any day now.

I'm not knocking your hard work, and I respect your right to your opinion and your right to voice it, but you're not entitled to your own facts. Giving SS payments to people that aren't poor wasn't in the original plan.

I'm not against people making a good living or even becoming millionaires. More power to them. But it seems to me that the people that are really, really working to fuck this country up and turn it into a plutocracy and an oligarchy are, SURPRISE, overwhelmingly millionaires. And the majority of them didn't "earn it the old fashioned way," they either got it by gambling in the stock market or inheriting it or speculating in real estate. None of that really qualifies as "working for it" in my book.

I'm against a social policy that gives money to the upper middle class and millionaires. The way to fix SS is to take the cap off of the amount of income from which it is deducted, and fix a limit on the income of those that can receive it. Simple formula. You want to disagree with me, fine.

I also believe that people that have a million dollars in assets can support themselves in between jobs rather than collecting unemployment.

[doc03]

19. You wish wish you had steel mills in Mississippi?

You do, you have the one I worked in. My company Severstal built a new mill in Columbus Mississippi a few years ago and next year they will double the capacity. They built the plant down there because Mississippi has a Right to Work Law. They moved the production from our plant to Mississippi because of lower labor costs and no pesky union. When they decide you people are making too much they will build a plant in China. That's the reason people are working in a concrete prefabrication plant for peanuts, people in the south don't want to pay union dues or won't fight to get one. That's why we
have a pension we fought and sometimes died to get pensions instead of taking wage increases we established a pension plan so we wouldn't have to eat cat food and live in poverty on SS. If you think someone that worked in a steel mill or coal mine should give up the SS we paid into you are to far to the loony left for me. I paid $135,000 into SS over my lifetime. My mother receives $1002 per month from SS and $125 per month from my dads pension so I suppose in your way of thinking that should be deducted from her SS.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

11. The bulk of life expectancy gain is reduced child mortality

The increase in life past 65 among people who reach 65 in the first place is much less.

[doc03]

15. I am sure you are right about the child mortality

but still the life expectancy has increased significantly. If you walk through an old cemetery it is surprising how many infants died back in the early 1900s.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

16. Ezra Klein: Making Social Security less generous isn't the answer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/04/AR2010090400096.html

"Start with the basic rationale for raising the retirement age. As Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has argued, when Social Security was signed into law, the retirement age was 65 and life expectancy was 63. "The numbers added up pretty well back then," he said on Fox News. But that's misleading. That figure was driven by high infant mortality. If you were a white male who'd made it to age 60 in 1935, you could expect 15 more years going forward. If you're a white male who lives to 60 today, you can expect 20 more years going forward.

Moreover, those averages conceal a lot of inequality. In 1972, a 60-year-old male worker who made less than the median income had a life expectancy of 78 years. By 2001, he had a life expectancy of 80 years. Meanwhile, workers in the top half of the income distribution shot to 85 years from 79. Insofar as the argument for raising the retirement age is that "Social Security beneficiaries live a lot longer today than they did in 1935," it should be restated as: "Social Security beneficiaries tend to live somewhat longer today than they did in 1935, and that's much more true of rich beneficiaries than poor beneficiaries."

And so what? Lurking beneath this conversation is an unquestioned assumption: We live longer, so we should work longer. That's pretty intuitive to members of Congress, who seem to like their jobs and don't seem to like the idea of retiring. It's also pretty intuitive to blogger/columnists, who spend their time in air-conditioned rooms opining about pension programs. But most people don't work in Congress or in the media. They work on their feet. They strain their backs. They're bored silly at the end of the day. By the time they're in their 60s, they want to retire.

You see that reflected in Social Security. Age 66 is when you get full benefits. But most people begin taking Social Security at age 62. They get less, but they can retire earlier. To them, the trade-off is worth it. And remember, the country is much richer than it was in 1935. Adjusting for inflation, our gross domestic product in 1935 was $865 billion. In 2009, it was more than $12 trillion. We have more than enough money to buy ourselves some leisure time at the end of our lives. At least if that's one of our priorities."

************

Raise the fucking cap.

[melm00se]

18. thank you all

for the informative posts.