SS retirement age - how does it help Koch roaches?

[Why Syzygy]

Raising the age is usually linked with privatization. But what other reasons are these criminals going after SS?

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. It Helps Actuarily

Raising the retirement age means fewer people draw out of the system. A higher age means that fewer survive the extra year or two. If it is somehow privatized that leaves money in the system to be used to make money for Wall Street. It is a way to cut costs. They really want to raise the age to 70. Heck why not make it 75.

The Kochs are not the only ones behind it. There is another billionaire who name I have forgotten is after Social Security and Medicar on steroids. A lot of these billionaires are not a lot different than organized crime.

[obey]

2. Canada hikes retirement age to 67 in fed budget

Them bastards must run Canada too.

Canada hikes retirement age to 67 in fed budget
By CHARMAINE NORONHA, Associated Press – 4 hours ago
TORONTO (AP) — Canada's Conservative government said Thursday that it is raising the retirement age to 67 from 65 for pension benefits as the finance minister introduced a federal budget features the biggest cutbacks since the mid-1990s.
Jim Flaherty presented a budget that sees cuts of a total of $5.2 billion in annual federal spending, including scrapping the money-losing penny, in the government's first budget since the Conservative party won majority rule.
The government said delaying retirement benefits, worth more than $6,000 a year, for two years, will encourage people to stay in the workforce longer and save the government billions of dollars.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hsiaL8H1TXtC55Vyij9LwWmWYJaw?docId=e0c727af95c34845b1a27c2a0c63f5ae

[Yo_Mama]

3. There is a funding shortfall for SS

Raising the age (it is already legally going to 67, and it is 66 now) cuts the total amount of money that has to be spent to fund SS.

Current projection is that the combined OASDI fund is exhausted in 2036-2037 even with the full retirement age going to 67. Either you cut DI before then, which will extend the lifetime of OAS, or you raise revenues, or you cut benefits, or you raise the retirement age again, which further will cut benefits.

According to CBO, the HI exhaustion date is now 2016 - two years earlier than the last Trustees' estimate of 2018:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/index.html

In 2011, OASDI annual cost will exceed the sum of tax income plus General Fund reimbursements (for payroll tax revenue forgone under Public Laws 111-147 and 111-312) by an estimated $46 billion, the second consecutive year in which non-interest income has fallen short of cost. Nevertheless, the combined trust funds will continue to grow because projected interest earnings of $115 billion substantially exceed the non-interest income deficit. The report indicates that annual OASDI income, including payments of interest to the trust funds from the General Fund, will exceed annual cost every year until 2023, increasing the nominal value of combined OASDI trust fund assets. Beginning in 2023, net redemptions of trust fund assets with General Fund payments will be required until assets are exhausted in 2036. After trust fund exhaustion, continuing tax income would be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits in 2036 and 74 percent in 2085. When the programs are considered separately, the projected exhaustion date for the OASI Trust Fund is 2038, while that for the DI Trust Fund is 2018. Payment of full DI benefits beyond 2018 will require legislation to address the financial imbalance, such as a reallocation of the OASDI payroll tax rate between OASI and DI.

Even under more optimistic projections, it does appear that the HI Trust fund gets exhausted in 2017. So either 4 or 5 years from now, Congress has the choice of cutting DI benefits by approximately 20% or reallocating OAS income to DI to balance the funds. If Congress does that, the 2011 Trustee's report projected that the combined OASDI trust funds would be exhausted in 2036, requiring benefit cuts to all recipients. It's probably earlier than that, realistically. As retirement ages increase, the number of DI recipients is doomed to go up. If you are disabled when you are 63 and you could get full retirement at 65, you probably go on early retirement to avoid the whole hassle and wait for benefits. But if you are disabled at 63 and you have to wait four more years for full retirement, taking early retirement won't allow you enough to live on, so you are going to go on disability. Trying to defer the Medicare eligibility age makes the whole thing worse, not better.

So if you are 65 now, you stand a chance of seeing benefit cuts in your lifetime, and if you are 50 now, your only chance of avoiding them is to die early. Under current law, that is.

This ignores the fact that there is no actual source of funds in these trust funds, and that as annual shortfalls in incoming revenue increase, we will rapidly approach the time when we cannot borrow enough and we will have to raise taxes to increase revenues to cover the legally required payments.

[mbperrin]

4. Or simply remove the cap on income from which SS withholding is taken.

Problem solved forever.

Plus - 2036? a problem? anyone name a damn thing these politicians are worried about beyond the current cycle?

Funny how we can't cut war.
We can't cut OIL company subsidies.
We can't collect the trillions owed by tax evaders that we know about.

But we can cheerfully sentence my grandmother to work a few more years with that heart murmur, osteoarthritis that makes her use a walker, and shortness of breath so extreme she can't walk to the end of a 25' oxygen hose in a day.

Bastards.

[Yo_Mama]

5. Well, that's disability

Honestly, we need to make sure that's still there.

The current legal retirement age is scheduled to go to 67 years already. Preserving disability is necessary, for obvious reasons. A lot more people will be using it.

Yes, we do need to be worrying about what happens in 2016 and 2036. This is people's lives we're negotiating, not wild flings on the Riviera.

Obviously we WILL be raising taxes. We should make the financial security of OASDI a flaming priority.

Anyone born 1960 or later won't be able to get full SS benefits until 67:
http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/retirechart.htm

http://www.ssa.gov/retirement/1960.html

The shortfall estimates are increasing rapidly, and our national debt is increasing rapidly, and people need to be aware of these issues. Without a law change, people on disability will get a very large cut by 2017. This isn't a long way off, and it needs to be on the political table and openly discussed years before then.

One of the factors that people need to understand is that regardless of what we theoretically have in the trust funds, these programs will be cut when we can no longer afford to borrow the funds. Therefore, additional sources of revenue are urgently necessary, and we should all be worried about the payroll tax cut.

[girl gone mad]

7. There is no shortfall and there is no crisis.

A sovereign currency government does not have to borrow or tax to cover its sovereign currency debt obligations.

Push your neo-liberal crack elsewhere.

[magical thyme]

8. exactly, and thank you.

We are a sovereign nation. WCOOM.

I'd also suggest they lift the cap to increase the revenues. There were a few very good years when I hit the cap. I didn't need the extra few bucks and would have preferred to continuing paying in AND receive SSN at 65 instead of having to wait to 66.

I'd also suggest that instead of raising the age, they should lower it. I for one would be more than happy to retire earlier and on the poor side, and leave my job to a young person with their life ahead of them.

[mother earth]

6. Koch roaches are vermin! Thanks for posting this, WS. A big K & R. They've brought us ALEC, we

are witnessing a blatant takeover. The oligarch cares not that some are taking notice, they have the time & the money and they've invested it well. This will not end because we are not demanding campaign finance reform. The end results are far reaching, and I've no doubt that Occupy is only the beginning (of the revolt side, that is).

Nice to "see" you here.

Is this the "transparency" we were promised? I think not, but they certainly have been blatant in their actions. Of course, they continue to wave Jesus and the flag in front of the unknowing. They are getting big bang for their bucks in the politicians they are funding.

[stevebreeze]

9. you are all missing the obvious

fewer people on SS means more people in the work force. Supply and demand works more people in the work force means lower wages for workers. Since in the current democracy light system, money =speech= power, they have more of all and you have less of all. Thus it is more difficult in all ways to challenge them.