Bernie Sanders Invite Bush To Go Fuck Himself

[Minimalist]

[Lek]

[Dragonetti]

Cost of living has exceeded what Social Security would provide in terms of retirement.

[Minimalist]

If we knock the cap of their contributions, we'll also need to pay them based on their increased contributions.

Who says?  Besides, thanks to that senile old fuck, Reagan, 85% of social security benefits are taxable anyway.

[Lek]

If we knock the cap of their contributions, we'll also need to pay them based on their increased contributions.

Who says?  Besides, thanks to that senile old fuck, Reagan, 85% of social security benefits are taxable anyway.

Actually I agree with Jeb Bush. If people are living 20 years longer and being healthier longer, I think it's common sense and mathematics to raise the age at which we can collect social security. Giving full social security benefits to 65 year olds today is akin to putting the retirement age at 45 years old when it was established in 1936. Also, the number of workers paying into social security per recipient is much lower today that in earlier years. If we don't get a higher percentage of productive people paying in,then we end up with the situation we have now. It will just go broke or benefits will be reduced.

[Pyrrho]

[Thumpalumpacus]

Who says?  Besides, thanks to that senile old fuck, Reagan, 85% of social security benefits are taxable anyway.

Actually I agree with Jeb Bush.  If people are living 20 years longer and being healthier longer, I think it's common sense and mathematics to raise the age at which we can collect social security.  Giving full social security benefits to 65 year olds today is akin to putting the retirement age at 45 years old when it was established in 1936.  Also, the number of workers paying into social security per recipient is much lower today that in earlier years.  If we don't get a higher percentage of productive people paying in,then we end up with the situation we have now.  It will just go broke or benefits will be reduced.

Rather than make people work harder longer, remove the limited income which can be FICA-taxed.

Rich people won't miss an extra couple of hundred dollars a year ... but old folks will certainly miss every hour spent in labor rather than retirement.

Money is replaceable. Time isn't.

[nihilistcat]

Life expectancy has risen by around 16 years since implementation of social security, but I've seen various studies that indicate we would only have to raise the social security tax by 0.9% (so 0.45% for both employer and employee, still much less than the average employer contributes in other developed countries, so it won't impose a competitive disadvantage). That's a less than a half percentage point increase for workers (even if you're a low wage worker ... it would be barely noticeable).

So I definitely support keeping the age at 67 and just raising the tax (I think a ten or eleven year retirement after forty years of working is the least people should get). Moreover, you also have to consider quality of life at an advanced age. While we do a good job of keeping people alive (because we can treat disease so much more effectively than we could in the 1930's), we don't really have many ways to mitigate the debilitating effects of human aging.

Hopefully we'll get better at this in the future (there's some promising studies out there), but we have to base our assumptions on current science (not speculative science). It's probable that we'll be able to extend human life by literally extending the lifespan of our cells, but we're not there yet, and it's not 100% certain that we will be (or for that matter, it's not 100% certain that merely extending cell life will result in significant life extension). When/if that day comes, then obviously we'll need to have a much different conversation about social security (and many many other things)

[Minimalist]