re: Nikki Haley Says It’s Time to Raise the Retirement Age to Reflect on Life Expectancy

I believe it should be rolled back to 55. If you’ve worked and paid in, you should have the choice to back off at 55. Just my opinion.

I've got no particular affinity for Nikki Haley, but the fact that so many of you willful idiots cannot understand that this is the kind of thing an actual adult running for president would say frightens me.

If she were bitching about sending a tiny fraction of the money we spend on SS and Medicare to Ukraine or worse, Israel, ya'll would be applauding, but she's talking about two federal programs that comprise almost half of the federal budget and that is insolvent. For those of you for whom that word is too big, that means if no one changes something about it, it's going to collapse anyway under the weight of its own financial burden. And if the idiots in D.C. let that happen, it's going to take the US economy with it, and I'm not just talking about higher inflation. And we're not talking about 40 or 50 years from now, we're talking about 8-10 years if her data is correct. And even if it's not, it's going to be close to being correct. This isn't climate change we're talking about.

If you're not going to raise the age at which people become eligible for those programs, what's the solution?

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How about instead we stop funding endless wars to the tune of 10 trillion

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It's actually 8 Trillion since 9/11, and that'll get you about 4 year's worth of funding SS/Medicare. So instead of it collapsing in 8-10 years it will collapse in 12-14 years.

Then what?

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What do y'all not understand about the fact that there isn't money to pay out to people at age 65, much less 55?

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Every employee could work until they die and it still wouldn't cure the democrats waste.
When it was set up, social security was for workers who paid into the system. Almost immediately the liberals started adding folks to the payroll who didn't pay into the system.

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The IBFreeman solution to SS is more than the average politician can ponder but it is simple and solves the entire program.

1) Benefits stay the same

2) benefits are funded by a national sales tax that will be adjusted every year to pay the amount projected to be paid

3) employees will be required to save 5% of their payroll and employers match it. There will no longer be a payroll tax saving employers and employees the 7.5% currently in place. This saving can be directed to private accounts including 20 year CDs that pay at least 3% interest at FDIC banks (the banks can count a portion of these CDs as capital instead of debt so these CDs would be hybrid debt/equity vehicles)

4) retirees cannot begin drawing Social Security until the savings described in number 3 are withdrawn at the SS monthly rate. SS then becomes a stop gap for the savings instead of a pure welfare payment.

The advantages to everybody of the IB plan are:

1) immediately there will be a lag in paying benefits as new retirees will have some savings they will have to spend first. As the program gets older this will be very significant. In 10 years I project the average age of new people first drawing the now stopgap SS will be over 75 even though they will have retired at 65. In twenty years most people will never have to draw SS and will have more money in saving than they will draw in retirement creating an estate. This will do more to eliminate generational poverty than any previous government program.

2) the US treasury can immediately repatriate the SS trust fund and the debt it holds---the largest single holder of US debt--and will have in one swoop eliminated current US budget.

3) in theory if the politicians do not squander the sales tax will be near zero in 10 years to fund this.

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You could have simplified that greatly by simply saying, "Raise taxes."

You don't really save the payroll tax, it's just diverted into a fund that draws interest; people still can't buy stuff with it, and it becomes 10% instead of 7.5%. Plus the national sales tax.

So raising taxes is one solution, sure. Is that what we think is best for the economy?

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Adults likely better understand that there are various complicated dynamics at play.

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So the adults are the ones responding "frick you, Lil Nikki?"

Really?

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Every employee could work until they die and it still wouldn't cure the democrats waste.

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So?

How does that mean there's going to be money to pay SS benefits at 55?

Life expectancy is going down

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You can raise the retirement age or raise your FICA taxes. That will eventually be your choice.

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More likely both will come to pass....with no choice.

“ it reduced life expectancy numbers”

So did America getting insanely obese. Next time you are in the supermarket take a count percentage of how many people are overweight and obese. I actually live in one of the less obese areas of the US now and the average percentage I get is 70%