Without Major Changes Social Security Is Dead

1. Stop electing politicians whose main political objective is to gut social programs like social security, medicare, TANF, etc. It's been part of the Republican playbook for years, hobble the programs until they are unable to effectively provide what they promise, and then use that failure as a justification for eliminating them entirely all in the name of 'shrinking government.'

2. TAXES - It's basic accounting - if you want nice things, you have to find a way to pay for them. Expanding payroll taxes for the middle class is one way, but it would be more effective to close the tax loopholes and go after tax-cheaters among corporations and extremely wealthy families that cost the US trillions of dollars per year.

3. Decrease spending - I'd be okay with limiting social security to those who actually depend on it. The wealthy can pay their own way, and whatever happens with social security doesn't really affect them in any meaningful way. Apart from limiting benefits to just those who need them, we should also be looking at government spending overall - especially in the military - to find where there is excessive wastefulness - this money could also be diverted to programs that actually help people (not corporations or wars).

4. Encourage more personal saving among those who are likely to depend on social security in their old age. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, there's not much leftover at the end of the month to plan for retirement. Increasing the amount of money the poor have and at the same time limiting their vulnerability to being entirely wiped out by an unexpected crisis (i.e. through unexpected illness, accident, or misfortune) will alleviate dependence on the system overall as well as improve quality of life overall. We do this by making sure that working people can earn a living wage and strengthening the social programs that Republicans are trying to destroy.

5. Building communities - The US has become atomized, and independence has become more toxic than a virtue. We've lost the ability to share and look out for one another, and this means that those who require more care (i.e. the elderly) have less support from people around them. While this is very much cultural, the government can focus on policies that promote community or limit its erosion. This could also mean strengthening families - not in the regressive conservative sense of enforcing 'traditional family values' on everyone, but in actually supporting them with the resources they need to thrive (helping them to build security in every sense of the word. STOP offloading this responsibility onto religious organizations that exchange their help for indoctrination - they're predatory and exploitive, not real help.

Just toss everyone over 69 right into a well and be done with it.

Just a note, you could eliminate the SS problem by getting rid of the step up basis today. It’s the largest tax loophole to make sure vast amounts of income are never paid.

Don’t expect your rich politicians to do this, they use it all the time.

For those unfamiliar it sets the initial value of an asset to the day you inherit it, not the day you cash it in. So if I had stocks I bought for $1,000 twenty years ago and sold them for $10,000 today, I would owe taxes on $9,000. If I died and willed those to my kid today and he sold them for $10,000, he owes nothing in taxes. This generationally passes on hundreds of billions in wealth every year that is never taxed.

Quote by MsStep

Like it has with other programs, Congress has expanded the range of SS benefits. Now it’s time to pay for them one way or another. My guess is they’ll increase the payroll tax rate and raise the earnings limit.

Their current plan is to die rich.

Quote by ElCoco

Only fixes that are somebody else's problem are easy to live with. Increasing the payroll tax rate definitely won't be popular!

Increasing the taxes on the rich is, on the other hand, very popular. They still won’t do it.

For those who want to raise retirement age, the declining life expectancy from an American and the functional retirement age (IE when people can actually afford to retire) is resulting in a country who’s retirement age is higher than it’s life expectancy in a decade at the current rate. Congrats Gen X, your more likely to die before retiring than having any golden years!

Our crappy medical system is plummeting our life expectancy, so Medicare for all will plummet medical costs and make actually retiring before you die viable.

Also, national rent control is a key factor in preventing inflation from lowering the value of SS.

Government spends $3.5 on a fighter jet that never worked with money it didn’t have. No one blinks an eye.

Suggest adding to the national debt to feed and house the elderly, apparently that’s where we draw the line. Ironically it’s the older generation who opposes funding SS who are going to feel the brunt of it. Same way they oppose free college for nurses or benefits for care workers when they all are going to desperately need them in the next few decades.

The consolation prize is neglect and bedsores in overcrowded mental health facilities which take the influx of the poor elderly.

Quote by Ironic

We could change SS so it's not funded separately, but that's just kicking the can down the road. Given that we've already got a $33+ national debt, adding another big, underfunded program to the others won't help. I'd say the better approach would be to decide what mix of changes needs to be made to SS to keep it in the black and then implement them. Everybody will have to give something (age, cap amount, max income amount, means testing) to continue providing that part of the social safety net.

Looking at the SS problem in a vacuum is ignoring greater budget problems.

The big two is blank check military budgets that take up the latter part of our spending. Then there’s under taxing the rich and corporations.

Problem being in America is irks not a functional democracy. The rich give you a small pool of potential elected officials to choose from. Since you need the media and money to make a legitimate run at office it’s not realistic to send grassroots candidates em masse into the government. Of course you can’t change campaign financing laws without the existing crop of corporate owned politicians voting for it, which they’ll never do. So until there’s a major upheaval it will just keep getting worse.

So, SS is screwed. Kicked down the line for the next corporate shills to ignore.

We should allow people who ordinarily would simply file their W2 and not worry about the taxes they are having deducted from their paychecks - take those monies and invest them with a trusted Wall Street brokerage firm. The average American is smart enough to know what he or she wants to do with their investments. No sense in letting the government take those taxes year after year after year with no actual promise of ever seeing any of those monies in terms of a social security check.

Nah, let's go gamble our SS & Medicare at the Wall Street Casino!

There would be a churning epidemic inside of 4 months.

I would assume that some of you are in the retirement age and are receiving said check monthly.

If so, what's your take on it?