That would leave me a victim of generational theft brought about by the greedy...
Perhaps it is time to take the discussion away from those that are and did pay, and turn it to those that did not and do not pay...
socialist security needs to be phased out, but to cut off those that paid into it and say “Sorry pal” would take an entire generation and turn them out into the streets ( not an exaggeration, but a for real thing ) because a whole host of people did not prepare, but spent all they had banking on s.s.
I find that way of thinking irresponsible at best, but this is the fact..
It needs to be phased out over time, and it can be done without creating a generation of people that spent their lives working, only to be put out onto the streets..
here is a starting point..
1) all benefits, present and projected, are frozen, no cola, no raises, just frozen...
2) People aged 50 and up will recieve all frozen benefits, but will have their s.s. taxes jacked up..and the reason for this is simply a lack of time to save enough to replace the s.s. income they paid into for over 40 years..
3) people 40 to 50 would see a slight increase in their s.s. taxes, and would recieved reduced benefits. The monetary “penalty” would be offset with larger tax advantages for saving and contributions to IRA/401K plans. They still have a fair amount of time to recover and plan.
4) people 30 to 40 would pay the same rate they do now, with even greater tax advantages for contributing to retirement..they would get a greatly reduced amount from s.s.
5) people 20 to 30 would pay a greatly lesser amount, and would get no s.s..... but they will get a very large tax advantage for contributing to retirement
6) people under 20, will contribute nothing, and will not get the “superduper” tax advantage.
this is my starting point. What do you think?
You have some interesting ideas, but first and foremost is effectively communicating to everyone that “we’re broke” and that there is no way everything is going to be paid as they may expect.
We haven’t even come close to that hurdle, so that makes all the suggestions you make, prudent or not, irrelevant.
If here, on a supposed conservative internet site we cannot convince people of the fiscal reality that is before us, how are we ever going to convince a wider, likely less reasonable group of people that they aren’t going to get “theirs”
The political reality is that nobody is going to suffer a cut until everyone suffers a drastic cut.
The GOP isn’t going to do it, the Democrats would never think about it, given that the Tea Party was initially a response to Obamacare impact to Medicare - not about the true fiscal situation we face, I’m not optimistic about a government solution, when this is a problem borne of government “solutions”.
The truth is all that matters. Money you get today comes from somebody who must earn it today and tomorrow - and who is not going to have a government check waiting for them like people today have.
What would be a rational response for them? Pay and hope?
“this is my starting point. What do you think?”
Doesn’t matter what you think, it will go nowhere.
It should be obvious to anyone in this forum who does think, that the problems of programs like Social Security, Medicare, etc. will NEVER be “fixed” until the system has collapsed and the payments literally stop being paid.
Then, and ONLY then, will there be the realization by both those who receive the benefits and by those who determine how they will be distributed (elected officials) that the system must be “fixed”.
And then, and ONLY then, will it be.
Even a week before “collapse day zero”, the politicians of both parties will still be conniving and concocting schemes to prop the old system up and keep it going just a little longer. It’s they way they work, it’s ingrained into their political consciousness, and they won’t confront reality until reality confronts them...