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Originally Posted by Stu from NYC
I do not see privatization happening but something must be done to make it sustainable.
It was set up to pay out at age 65 when the majority of people did not live that long.
Now that we are living well past that time enough is not coming in to maintain full payment for more than say 10 years.
Congress and President must either raise retirement age, allow people who want to do so to opt out probably sacrificing what they put in, raise the amounts paid into the system either by rate or income after which no more payments into the system or allow those who wish to to invest part of their money in some sort of mutual fund assuming some degree of risk.
Instead both parties would rather kick the can down the road. At some point action will have to be taken and the longer they take to do so the more difficult the fix will be.
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You are right. The retirement age has already been raised. It was 65 for years. It is now 66. In two or three years it will be 67 for full Social Security. I waited until 66. However something like 75% of people retire as soon as they are able to, at 62, despite the greatly reduced benefits. I haven’t heard talk of THAT being changed, but perhaps I just didn’t notice.
I think that deferring the Social Security Payroll Tax is being presented as money in our pockets, but it is really a ploy to prepare us for canceling it for good. Precious few of us here would like the results. Could you get by on a 25% cut to your benefits? How about 100%? What would you give up? Dining out? Golf? Would you have to move to a mobile home somewhere? Would you have to move in with your kids, or live in a cardboard box somewhere?
What really needs to be done is to RAISE what the employer and the employees pay in Social Security taxes by 0.2% a year for ten years. That’s really all it would take to “save Social Security.”