Posted on 10/25/2011 7:01:45 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Grandma and Grandpa may be getting a Social Security raise, but half of their grandkids are pretty sure they won’t see any Social Security at all.
That’s according to a new poll from the Strategic Research Institute at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis. It’s working with several other organizations on the iOMe Challenge, which seeks to help young people think about their financial future.
Apparently, they don’t think there’s much future there at all, at least when it comes to Social Security.
The online survey, which included a nationally representative sample of 642 18- to 29-year-olds, found only 5 percent expect that the Social Security benefits they stand to receive at age 67 to be about the same as the ones retirees are receiving today.
In addition to the 50 percent who don’t think it will exist at all, another 28 percent thought it would exist but the benefits would be much smaller. Eighteen percent weren’t sure what would happen.
Social Security is at risk of running short of funds unless some changes are made, because the general population is both aging and living longer. Proposals include raising the Social Security tax cap, increasing the age at which you start collecting Social Security and reducing benefits.
David Wegge, executive director of the Strategic Research Institute, noted that no matter what happens with Social Security, millennials will likely have to rely more on their own savings than previous generations. That’s because pensions also are becoming much less common.
“There’s much more responsibility that’s being placed on an individual’s shoulder,” Wegge said.
(Excerpt) Read more at lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com ...
My wife and I both turned 66 this year and we are getting full S/S checks, plus we still work!! So it is like extra money!! But we both paid into S/S for 45 years so we earned it. So we use the money to go to the Indian casino. Don’t flame me! I am a long time Freeper. Just living life large.
My wife and I both turned 66 this year and we are getting full S/S checks, plus we still work!! So it is like extra money!! But we both paid into S/S for 45 years so we earned it. So we use the money to go to the Indian casino. Don’t flame me! I am a long time Freeper. Just living life large.
Doubledipping & doubleposting?
Since there is general consensus that SS cannot pay the benefits it has promised to future retirees, it is time to stop extracting FICA taxes from workers.
If we eliminate the worker-side of the FICA, but expand the employer-side to include all employee compensation — meaning not just wages up to $106K/yr, but all wages, all non-cash benefits like health and life insurance, company vehicle allowances, stock options, etc. — and up the rate to 10%, the revenue collected from the employer would collect $850B/yr. That, combined with the $2.5T owed by the general fund to the SS Trust fund, would be enough revenue to pay current benefits to existing retirees until they die. It would be enough to pay future retirees the HHS poverty level of $11k/yr or the amount they’ve earned up to the date they stopped contributing directly, whichever is higher. So nobody has to worry about grandma eating cat food, but a better-than-poverty-level retirement will require people save some of that 7.65% they are no longer paying to FICA and invest for themselves.
I would also require 20 years employment in the US to receive the full default poverty-level benefit, subtracting 5% of benefit for each year they are short of 20 years — that would stop retirement age immigrants and “refugees” from collecting from a system they never contributed to. Collecting retirement earlier than 65 will also reduce your benefit by 5% per year — retire at 60 if you want, but received just 75% of the age 65 amount.
To discourage outsourcing labor, I’d also apply this 10% tax to expenditures to foreign entities including imports, essentially applying our payroll tax to the outsourced labor embedded in those imports. This would garner another ~$200B and allow complete elimination of the Corporate profits tax and all the lobbying and corruption it promotes as well as the overhead to businesses to comply with the corporate tax code. Those profits will still be taxed, but at the individual level as dividend or capital gain income.
Half of them will be right and the other half guilty of very wishful thinking.
Sorry and sorry. Much of what I post is satire. We don’t spend our S/S checks at casinos. But, like 99% of Boomers approaching retirement, we have no choice but to take the S/S money. It was part of our retirement plan. The other part is funded by our 401k. We know it sucks. But it’s what we’re stuck with.
Sorry and sorry. Much of what I post is satire. We don’t spend our S/S checks at casinos. But, like 99% of Boomers approaching retirement, we have no choice but to take the S/S money. It was part of our retirement plan. The other part is funded by our 401k. We know it sucks. But it’s what we’re stuck with.
Now that is an excellent post. You should run for office.
Too bad none of the major candidates have your full grasp of the situation.
Mark
Hey, no big deal, right? I mean, I'm sure the employers are just rolling in cash, so there would be no problem in increasing the cost of employing people. We hear the leftists screaming about how the employers are just sitting on all this cash, refusing to hire people. I wonder how many people would lose their jobs due to a plan like this? You propose boosting the employers' share of FICA and Medicare from roughly 7.5% to 10%, and increasing the tax over all the employees' compensation! Plain and simple, you need to look at the total cost of an employee to the employer, NOT just their salary. This includes ALL the taxes... Not just FICA, but unemployment insurance, workmans comp insurance, etc... The government has a problem understanding that employers do NOT provide jobs... Employers hire people and compensate them based on the value they can bring to the company through the goods and services they produce.
Mark
I wonder how many small business owners would just say "screw it," close up shop, and let their 5 or 10 employees go...
That plan would severely impact any labor cost intensive company... Many companies are already running on razor thin profit margins. Eliminating the corporate tax probably won't cover the cost increases to the employers.
Mark
Well, that’s a good point.
I personally would like to see the abolishment of all income taxes, payroll taxes, etc. I would like to see a national sales tax combined with tariffs on imported goods and that’s it.
We need to transition to personal individual retirement/medical accounts and get government out of that business. How we get to that point and honor our commitments to people that have worked and paid into the existing system? I don’t know, but we need to work towards that goal.
Nonsense. We all know the business just passes along its costs to the consumer, provided they can still compete when charging higher prices. Applying a factor of 1.10 to a salary vs 1.0765 will be more than compensated for by the savings on profit taxes. Roughly the same total tax will be paid by employers as currently, but the emphasis is placed on profits and getting the most productivity out of employees, rather than subsidizing unprofitable employers and unproductive workers. Their competitiveness will be improved by applying the payroll tax to embedded labor in imports.
“I wonder how many people would lose their jobs due to a plan like this?” Answer: None. There will be huge job growth as employers no longer have to worry about their taxes. Everything is known upfront. Any employee will cost 1.10x their compensation package. Period. No tax planning, no depreciation schedules, no 67,000 pages of tax code to try to game, just how best to make a profit. Business would flock to the USA as the most business-tax friendly country.
As far as applying the tax to all payroll costs instead of just wages goes, this means eliminating the myth that low-wage employees are under-compensated employees. It is dishonest to say an employee makes $20K when they also get $15K in employer-provided yet untaxed benefits. That employee costs the employer $35K in compensation and they should be paying payroll taxes on the full amount. Otherwise, the government is favoring the business that provides non-cash benefits over the employer who pays the employee the full $35K without benefits and let’s the employee choose what benefits to buy for himself. The government should not be favoring policies that take choices away from the employee.
“I wonder how many small business owners would just say “screw it,” close up shop, and let their 5 or 10 employees go...”
I would say “None”. A successful small corporation typically has at least a 10% profit margin. Eliminating the 35% Corporate profits tax means 3.5% of their revenues stays in their pocket. Even if all of the COGS was labor (no other expenses), their total tax would be going DOWN.
Currently: 7.65%*83.6 + 35%*10 = 9.9% of revenue going to taxes
My Plan: 10%*83.6 + 0%*16.4 = 8.36% of revenue going to taxes
If the small business is not a Corporation, then they are paying both sides of the current payroll tax or 15.3%. So their payroll tax drops from 15.3% down to 10%.
An employer loses under my plan if they have been gaming the current system by pretending employee costs are separate from benefits costs, so they can underpay the payroll tax. This is the equivalent of bartenders and other workers who make 75% of their income on tips and under report their income to cheat on their payroll and income taxes. It is part of what needs to be cleaned up in our tax system, not some “goody” that should be preserved.
“We need to transition to personal individual retirement/medical accounts and get government out of that business.”
Well ... SS was passed as part of the societal contract with workers whose age and/or health didn’t allow them to continue working. That is why it is funded by a tax on “work” and not “income”. The Depression demonstrated how their own planning for retirement had been deficient. Elderly were literally starving, and that showed a lack of societal respect for the elderly who had been productive members of society. People had proven themselves incompetent to plan for retirement, so government force was “needed”. SS was a poor solution for a lot of reasons. It doesn’t even accomplish its supposed goal of preventing the elderly from starving, since many SS recipients get far less than poverty-level benefits.
Even if we had “private accounts” as GW proposed, the government would still be using force against individuals to make them save part of their incomes. The advantages in that plan were better investment returns, and inheritance of the account when you died, but his plan still amounted to government force applied to individuals, and government still managed the whole thing.
My plan ends government force against individuals and guarantees a poverty-level retirement income. People are free to save as much or as little as they want beyond that, while being assured society won’t let them starve when they are too old to correct their mistakes. I think it’s a workable compromise.
To the degree that they’re receiving benefits they don’t need, yes, and I’ve already had several arguments on that point with them. Go eff yourself.
To be fair, I was giving the benefit of the doubt. I honestly don’t think that I’ll get anything from social security other than a bill for the bennies prior generations got. Retirement isn’t in the plans; dying with my boots on - sitting at my desk at work - is.
I hope they told you what a worthless whiney litle piece of crap you are.....Eff your self moron!!
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