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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (211967)	11/17/2004 7:54:36 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573766

Then dedicate the FICA income to SS alone. That doesn't really help the long range problems and it causes some short term problems. The age of the working population is fluid, not static, no? Its fluid, and the fluid is running downhill in terms of having enough workers to pay for each retiree. Its not just a baby boomer thing. Even after they all die off we will have less workers per retiree than we do now if the retirement age doesn't start moving up. For years we've been working on a (government budget fattening) surplus. For a while we will work on a deficit, then work our way back to a surplus. It's not complicated. When the new liabilities taken on by the system are considered it has been in continuous deficit, even when it is officially in a surplus. The surplus is more fiction than reality. Also during all of those years the number of workers to support each retiree has declined. The retirees don't get their own money back, their money was spent on previously retired people. They get money from currently working people. I do ok for myself but if all the sudden I had to take care of another person's expenses as well than it would be tough. The change from many workers to retiree to maybe two workers per retiree (and maybe eventually even less depending on how life span and retirement ages change) is an extra burden. That extra burden exists whatever the state of "surplus" or deficit exists in the SS "trust fund"/ The idea that the "government" will pay for people's retirement really means that people who are working will pay for the retirement. No, the idea is that people who spent their life paying into SS will receive benefits. Both ideas are the same thing expressed in different ways. Let's just eliminate benefits for anyone that earns over $75K after retirement. I'd have to think about whether I would pick that specific cut off point. I probably would not go from full benefits to no benefits at any specific cut off point. The payments probably should be phased out, and if $75k means $75k in 2004 dollars I would probably start the phase out at a lower level. Raise FICA by, say, 10%. An additional 10% tax on employment would not be a good idea IMO. Put it in a "lock box" What would that mean. If the SS administration takes in more money than it spends the money has to go somewhere. Right now by law they go in to a special type of government bond. Investing money in government bonds means you are lending money to the government's general fund. That money can and will get spent, so no lockbox is possible. If you instead put the money in private investments you would actually have a real fund, that could have some sort of "lock box" set up. But if we are going to put the money in private investments it might be better to let people invest it themselves with similar "lockbox" or "IRA/401K" type restrictions on withdrawals. You don't want to solve SS, you want to eliminate it. I'm not sure I want to eliminate it, but I do think that it would have been better if it never came in to being. f you are going to eliminate it without breaking promises to people who paid in a lot of money, and without causing any large disruption it would take generations to get rid of it. I don't think the government should be the retirement fund for all retired people. If there is a problem with some starving or suffering than that can be addresses by a welfare type payment. I don't think the system should be set up in such a way that the middle and upper classes get retirement funding from the government, but we are stuck in the situation that previous decisions got us in, and I would oppose any effort to just repudiate the SS obligation. Tim