Party of No Blocking Doc Fix

[Article 15]

A LOT of people never really retire at all.

Turns out that clipping coupons and playing bingo all day gets stale after awhile.

Three more years to work and build their personal retirement and savings wont help out? Working a couple of extra years usually means a strong boost in annual income in retirement, does it not?

Handing a bunch of your rightful earnings over to a bunch of Washington bureaucrats is hardly "building personal retirement and savings", as the current problem with OASI demonstrates in spades.

It hasn't stopped me.

G'night, man.

 

[Immanuel]

True, but our life expectancy has grown since SS's conception decades ago. Raising the age would help "balance" things back out in a way, I suppose.

True in that sense, however, I still believe the issue is more than just saving money in this case.

So many things have changed in the financial markets since SS was established. It is my belief that the citizens of this still great nation would be better off if we weaned ourselves off of Social Security AND established a privatized system. I do not believe we should leave it up to the people to decide IF they want to set up a retirement plan, because too many would do what I did and say... "I'll do it later". Later... anything later than today... is too frigging late!

Note: we would still need a fund for those families that loose their main breadwinner to either early death or disability, but that could easily be established.

Immie

I'm not entirely sure I would "wean off" .. I interpret that as eventually eliminating it but I think relieving some pressure is necessary. I agree that a first step has to be taken as the system as it stand right now sucks. Raising the retirement age seems like a fairly reasonable place to start to me.

I don't have a lot of time to get into this but here is what I would do.

I would pick a date in the future, say 1/1/2060, anyone born after that date would be ineligible for SS benefits under the plan we have now and would not be responsible to pay into it. These would be people that begin their working careers around the year 2080.

A formula could be developed that would fund the plan for people who are now retired, are working now and have paid into it all there lives and those who are born between now and 2060, as time moved closer to 2080 the tax rate would decrease as the benefit payments dropped. Those that are now retired would get the benefits they were promised. Those who are working now, would start their "New SS Plan" contributions and receive benefits under the old system (on a sliding scale) based upon how long they have participated in the old plan. As people who receive benefits under the old plan die off, benefit payments decrease. Eventually, we would no longer have anyone receiving the old plan benefits and we would be free and clear of the problem.

This will take one generation to accomplish and quite frankly, I believe shortfalls should be covered by the government as we are going to do so anyway. I would even be supportive of increasing the tax rate/ceiling/age of retirement to minimize shortfalls for the time being. The eventual goal would be to have people funding their own retirement and should they not live long enough to enjoy that retirement, they at least could pass that on to their loved ones.

I realize naysayers will say that too many people don't know anything at all about investing and if the market crashes just before they retire, they are doomed. Those naysayers prove one thing, they know nothing at all about investing.

One further note: investing in single stocks should at the very least be limited to a certain percentage of one's funds. In other words, I should not be able to put 100% of my retirement fund into a company like... oh say BP. Hell, I cringe at the idea of allowing someone to put 10% of said fund into single stocks/bonds etc. The government would license funds (that nasty idea of regulation) to be able to receive SS Retirement Funds.

Immie

 

[saveliberty]

Good luck to the Celtics Article 15.