SS is not a retirement fund that you pay into and reap the benefits of at retirement, that is 401 K, pension, Roth IRA, etc. SS is a tax that pays for the benefits of current retirees. I know pay that tax for Father and Mother in law as they paid it for their parents. In the future, that tax will no longer be sufficient to cover the benefits of retirees. The government can either at that point: borrow, reduce benefit cost, increase the tax, reduce the number of recepients or eliminate the program. Ryan has proposed means testing as a way to reduce benefit cost, Joe Scarborough proposes raising the retirement age for everyone born after 1965 to reduce recepients, etc. Ryan has admitted ad neuseum that his proposal might not be the best one, but he believes a discussion to find the solution is important is not currently happening. If not it is belief that last solution will be forced on a country that can no longer afford the entitlement. Without some serious change SS and medicare are headed to what I believe was coined by Ross Perot, deep voodoo.

Pay the difference by raising taxes on current workers.

Cut benefits to these folks.

The best option is #2. The most politically feasible and most humane way to cut benefits is to not pay SS to people who are using the money to go on cruises or to buy a vacation home, and to keep benefits constant for folks using the money to pay for more basic needs. It’s also the best option going forward, since redistribution is already in play (see above), and this makes the program into something that matches what it was originally advertised as: a safety net for the truly needy.

This is not meant to offend, but it’s clear that you’re not completely aware of how the various proposed cost control mechanisms are meant to work and how SS reform works.

Do you prefer the general insult of increased inflation while the Treasury Department prints up new dollars to pay back the worthless bonds?

Do you prefer the more specific insult of paying pennies on the dollar to *all* Social Security recipients?

Means testing is an insult. So is jacking up the retirement age.

The money’s gone, and short of pissing on LBJ’s grave, I don’t see much that’s “fair” about it.

Further, your using this as an anti-Romney anti-GOP whine isn’t proposing any solutions, nor moving anything forward.

Money’s gone, Ace. No insurance is going to pay for it. Pick your poison.

Mew

As you may recall, investing in U.S. bonds is generally seen as safer than interest-bearing accounts, so .. *legally* they already surpassed your requirement.

The caveat is what happens when they cash these bonds in.

The money has to come back *out* of the general fund… and that means either massive inflation (because Treasury will just print up new dollars) or massive tax increases (because the general fund will go into the red) …or the U.S. welches on its’ obligations.

The money’s *gone*, and no amount of blamestorming is gonna bring it back. Those are the choices.

What do you propose?

Putting new monies into interest-bearing accounts doesn’t help us, although it helps protect the workers whose payments you’re talking about. Look up the Galveston Plan, it did exactly this.

Mew

That’s a BAAADD precedent… I mean, where will they set the rule as to how much money you can lose in the stock market, before Law Enforcement considers charges… And charges of WHAT exactly? Not being a financial savant?

If some rich guy blows a million at the Bellagio, will he face charges for wasting his own money?

That said, what’s really ironic, is the CEO of Chase is an Obama supporter… But as we all know from 08, there’s plenty of room under that campaign bus, should it suit His Highness-ness advancement…

I have nothing against the guy, since he has done a great job running his company over the past years (Given how much they’ve *made* while their competition was floundering, 2BN loss – even with an ‘and counting’ isn’t much)… But you have to wonder how many times folks like that will keep getting bit, before they stop feeding a party that believes in absolutely biting said feeding hands, if it’s expedient at the time…

There’s just stealing from today’s workers to give to today’s seniors (i.e., redistribution, mostly from the poor to the wealthy). That’s not going to work when there are less workers than there are retirees.

See my three options for remedying the situation above.

it certainly doesn?t justify compounding the felony by means testing Social Security and stealing workers? paid-in contributions

The point is…means testing is adding insult to injury…and the fact that it’s the Republican Standard bearer….and the sainted Ryan who many want to partner with Romney as VP that are playing class warfare by calling for means testing SS benefits is even more an insult

Mew

http://www.ssa.gov/history/taxationofbenefits.html

Third, while SS is not as much of a windfall for retirees as Medicare, recipients still receive more than they paid in

http://american.com/archive/2011/october/is-medicare-a-ponzi-scheme/

Then, in my case as a retiree, because gross adjusted income is a little higher than some arbitrarily set threshold, the Medicare “insurance” premium deducted from my Social Security payment is doubled not only for me, but also for my spouse whose Social Security payment is miniscule. So, in effect, there already is means testing!

The problem is that as the US gets older, the money collected by current SS taxation won’t be nearly enough to fund all future retirees: we’ll have more retirees and less workers than we currently have. Possible responses to this revenue shortfall include the following:

Raise taxes to meet shortfall.

Cut promised benefits to meet shortfall.

Reform program so that it’s cheaper to meet shortfall.

The last option is attractive, but won’t really help as a cost-saving mechanism until it’s been in place for a while — and at any rate, the benefits we provide right now are outsized, partly because they are based on COLAs (which makes no sense when most retirees are getting both SS and retirement, along with whatever other investments they’ve made).