Social Security Expected to Dip Into Its Reserves This Year

I'm correct, and you are still wrong.

 

Maybe, but I don't see it.

 

I assume you are referring to S.S.

You do receive a greater benefit from SS if you pay in more, up to the maximum benefit in any given year.

 

Asinine in any case. No person "plans on just taking their money and distributing it to" themselves. To suggest it is asinine. Maybe you meant something a bit different and didn't bother to be clear.

 

Quote: Another reason is that Baby Boomers are dying like flies every day! All you ever hear from the media is that Boomers are retiring in huge numbers as soon as they can, but they've already started DYING in large numbers, too. If you didn't already know this, once a person DIES, that person is no longer paid Social Security any more!

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Back in 1983, the politicians who raised the full retirement age to 66/67 were chanting the following three words;

"PEOPLE LIVE LONGER"

And in 2019, the (Let's raise it to age 69) will be chanting; "People live much longer"

 

They do;

2015 SS trustee report;

"The Social Security program is sustainable, but needs some adjustments. To keep the program solvent after 2034, Congress could choose to increase payroll taxes by about one-third, reduce benefits by about one-fourth, or make some combination of these or other adjustments."

https://blog.ssa.gov/trust-fund-reserve-gains-one-year-for-projected-depletion-date/

Tell me Mr. ronv, does 1% equates to one third?

NOPE, one third of 12.4% equates to 4.13%, and according MY calculations, in a previous post (556), I stated;

1% not enough

"IMO, 3% would restore SS long term solvency"

........and our experts are saying ABOUT 4.13%

Thus, according to my calculations, I'm about 1% below expert estimates, however, YOU are about 3% below!

My question to you; Where did you get your 1% info?

 

Or raise the payroll tax cap

 

If we keep kicking the can down the road, we'll eventually have to "eliminate"

 

If your kids are paying for you, why do you need social security?

 

I got it from your post here.

 

Yeah the typical leftist solution. Make someone else pay for it by screwing them.

Its a retirement benefit, the more you contribute the higher your benefit so if you raise what they pay in then then formula for benefits will increase their benefit and its a wash. So just increasing the cap won't get you more revenue flow.

 

Yes based on the maximum contribution. So try to answer what I asked. If you contribute more into a retirement system shouldn't your benefit increase accordingly? If not why not?

 

It might surprise you to know that I fully support eliminating the wage 'cap' for SS. In 2018 that cap is $128,400. There should be no 'cap' whatever, but if there were one, it should be for at least a half-million dollars per year -- gross earnings!

A lot of people earn more than $128K per year now, and they should pay "their fair share". Odd to hear that kind of talk from an admittedly fiscal Conservative who considers Socialism to be a failed, ruinous 19th and 20th-century experiment. But because we've all been stuck with SS and Medicare 'participation', and the providing of Medicaid, and dozens of Democrat-inspired "social programs" and welfare handouts going back as far as FDR, removing the 'cap' is fair, and necessary! The burden for all this socialism crap should be shared equally, on a percent-of-earnings basis.

 

How is it different from what you are saying needs to be done then?

 

Yes (*Sigh!*)... people are living longer... and they have been living longer for at least the last 100 years, on average. Nothing new there. But while that fact is trumpeted loud and long by the media every single time that the subject of Social Security emerges, nothing is ever said about how many people are dying. All we ever hear about is, '10,000 Boomers are retiring every DAY!"

Nothing is ever said about how many Boomers DIE each day, and how many of them go on Social Security at age 62, which means that they take a greatly LOWER payout in benefits. And you never, ever hear any talking media-head mention that fact that even though a person may work fifty years or longer, paying into the 'social systems' with every paycheck, when he dies -- there's no further payments to him (i.e., there is no "estate" created... the government sucks it all up!).

Think about it. You pay into the system for fifty years, you retire at 62, get the lowest payout possible, and then die maybe eight or ten years later?! How is THAT fair?

 

Try a median SS wage/salary of $46,640.94
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html

 

They are our Representatives to Government. Simply ask for better products at lower cost.

 

Sticking it to the highest earners so you don't have to pay more doesn't.

"Currently, workers pay Social Security payroll taxes on only the first $90,000 of their annual income. This "wage cap" is indexed to the growth of real wages in the economy and increases every year. The wage cap serves to limits the amount of Social Security benefits that a well-off retiree will receive. Even though Bill Gates and Donald Trump earn millions of dollars a year, for the purpose of calculating Social Security benefits, they earned just $90,000 in 2004.

Using the message that "Those who have benefited from the growth in the economy should be asked to pay a little more to help secure Social Security," groups such as AARP call for raising the amount of income subject to Social Security payroll taxes from $90,000 to somewhere between $125,000 and $200,000. AARP, which favors a $140,000 cap, claims that this simple move would "solve" 43 percent of Social Security's projected shortfalls.[1]

Polls show that raising the wage cap has some popular support. A February 10, 2005, Washington Post poll showed that 81 percent of those questioned supported raising the income cap.[2] Respondents might be more skeptical, however, if more people knew what AARP isn't telling them: raising the wage cap is no fix. It would postpone Social Security's problems for only a few years.

A recent report from the Social Security Administration (SSA) examined the effects of not just raising the wage cap, but of eliminating it completely.[3] Under this radical approach, Bill Gates and Donald Trump would pay Social Security taxes on every dollar that they earn. They would also receive benefits on those earnings. The scoring memo also examined a still more radical proposal: that people would pay Social Security taxes on all of their income but receive benefits only on income below $87,900, the wage cap that was used in the SSA study.[4] This would be a major shift from the current policy that Social Security benefits are based on a worker's taxable income. Still, neither of these policies would improve Social Security's cash flow very much, and both are much more ambitious than AARP's plan.

SSA's actuarial study showed that that eliminating the payroll tax cap entirely would only delay the start of Social Security's annual deficits by six years, from 2018 to 2024. Eliminating the wage cap on payroll taxes while paying benefits on only the first $87,900 of earnings would delay the start of annual deficits by an additional year, to 2025.

As well, these policies would delay the onset of massive deficits by only a few years. As Social Security now stands, annual deficits will first reach $100 billion a year (in 2003 dollars) in 2022, according to the 2003 Social Security trustees report.[5] Eliminating the wage cap delays $100-billion deficits until 2029, or only seven years. On the other hand, subjecting all earnings to payroll taxes but only paying benefits on income up to the current wage cap delays the start of those $100-billion deficits until 2031.

If completely eliminating the wage cap only delays deficits by six or seven years, how could just raising it to $140,000 solve a significant part of Social Security's financial problems?

Another problem with raising the wage cap is that for every taxpayer with an income of over $500,000 affected by raising the tax cap to $125,000, 27 taxpayers with lower incomes would pay higher taxes, too.[6] In 2001, the majority of taxpayers earning more than $90,000 had incomes between $90,000 and $150,000. Only a very small number of the 130 million tax returns filed in 2001 (0.3 percent of taxpayers) showed income between $500,000 and $1 million, and an even smaller number (0.1 percent) showed incomes of over $1 million.

Raising the cap to $125,000 would directly increase taxes for 7 million middle-class families. Going to the $140,000 advocated by the AARP would cost many of these families even more. At up to an additional $2,650 in taxes per year, this change might not mean much to millionaires, but the families who would bear the brunt of this tax increase would surely suffer.

Perhaps the most significant impact of raising the wage tax cap would be on small-business owners and the self-employed. Small firms and individual entrepreneurs are the driving force of rapid innovation and economic growth in the United States. Small-business owners would have to pay higher taxes on behalf of all their workers were the wage tax increased, and they might have to spend more on salaries, too, to make up the drop in workers' take-home pay. The self-employed would face a direct tax hike twice as great as other workers because they pay both side of the payroll tax.

No surprise, a higher tax cap would sap economic growth and destroy job opportunities. A 2001 report from the Center for Data Analysis modeled the economic impact of eliminating the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax.[7] The results of this small change-actually the largest tax increase ever-would be severe:

Reduce the take-home pay of 10.4 million workers by thousands of dollars, decrease family savings by thousands of dollars, and reduce investment by hundreds of billions of dollars;
Decrease the rate of economic growth significantly, shaving hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. GDP; and
Reduce the number of job opportunities and increase unemployment.
In other words, lifting the wage cap would be quite expensive in terms of its effect on the economy and on millions of individual workers and families.

Raising the wage cap has been greatly oversold. It would directly increase taxes for millions of middle-class families who can ill afford to give up even more of their paychecks. It would increase benefits for the wealthy, who scarcely need the extra money. And it would harm the economy, slowing growth and job creation, as well as impacting millions of families' savings. Worst of all, for all these terrible effects, raising the wage cap would push Social Security's massive shortfalls only a few years into the future. Social Security is already a bad deal for most Americans and a burden for younger generations. Raising the wage cap would make it worse."
https://www.heritage.org/social-sec...-payroll-tax-cap-does-not-fix-social-security

It may satisfy the envy of jealuosy of those on the left but in the long term would make it worse.

 

My answer is "just exactly as a person with a medical condition and therefore pays more for life insurance is sure to get more out of the insurance than a person who pays less."

SS is normally called "retirement insurance". It was never intended to be an investment yet you are trying to compare it to an investment.

 

You're not making any sense. You asserted, I believe, that Trust Fund securities are worthless because they can't be traded on the open market. They are very similar to Savings Bonds in that respect and Savings Bonds certainly are not worthless.
Now you say what?

 

Correction; Try an AVERAGE net compensation of $46,640.94

According to the above mentioned article, in 2016, the AVERAGE net compensation was $46,640.94, and the MEDIAN net compensation was $30,533.31, thus, why are falsifying the facts?

 

Sorry typo on my part, try the average which is not an estimate.

 

The disability part is insurance the rest is a retirement pension program.

If you contribute more into a retirement system shouldn't your benefit increase accordingly? If not why not?

 

https://www.benefits.gov/benefits/benefit-details/4402

 

Quote; SSA's actuarial study showed that that eliminating the payroll tax cap entirely would only delay the start of Social Security's annual deficits by six years, from 2018 to 2024. Eliminating the wage cap on payroll taxes while paying benefits on only the first $87,900 of earnings would delay the start of annual deficits by an additional year, to 2025.

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First, what's a social security annual deficit?

Answer; When outlays surpasses both contributions and interest payments.

My understanding; According to SSA, eliminating the cap would generate surplus contributions for several years, thus, increase the Trust Fund's reserve.

If so, would eliminating the cap ACTURIALLY restore SS long term solvency, or just postponed a depletion date by at least six years?

Anyone?