Excellent post. Precisely!
Why not have people save money in their own accounts, as you suggest?
It's unreasonable to expect Gen Ys to pay for the Boomer's retirement, just because statistically speaking, Boomers statistically are saving less money as a % of their income, per an article posted on the AMD thread.
In a nutshell, Boomers should be forced to save money in their own accounts - or work longer if they decide not to save. It should be their money. So they do not dump their issues onto the next generation, but then, that's what happens when you have only one age demographic represented in Congress. Since Gen Ys and Gen Xs are not represented in Congress, Congress just dumps it onto the next generations, rather than doing something rational like creating forced savings accounts.
You'll note how I'm a liberal Democrat, yet when it comes to Soc Sec, Ten and I pretty much see eye to eye. You'll find a huge generational gap between what the Congressional boomers think and what other generations think, not too surprisingly.
Here's more evidence of Soc Sec generational discrimination by Congress, against younger generational trends:
From USA Today:
"The ANTI-working women" [policy]:
A husband and wife who each earn $15k/yr will get a lifetime benefit of $177k. But a couple with one spouse earning $30k will get $273k. (That's 100k more just because Congress is sexist, statistically speaking.)
The Congress Hates Divorced-People policy:
Those who remarry adn rely on spousal benefits can come out behind if their new spouse has a lower lifetime earnings than their former spouse.
"Social Security consistently violates notions of equal justice by taxing more or paying less to those who are equally situated," Steuerle says. "Everybody I talk to from left and right agrees this is not a reasonable thing." The current policy rules were created in 1939 by a "bunch of guys sitting around a table" that "had stay-at-home wives." |
