Fed's Poole urges faster rise in US retirement age

[UpInArms]

http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-02-24T191302Z_01_WBT004854_RTRIDST_0_ECONOMY-FED-POOLE-RETIREMENT-URGENT.XML

CLAYTON, Mo., Feb 24 (Reuters) - Raising the U.S. retirement age faster could help the United States weather the fiscal strains of a retiring baby boom generation, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President William Poole said on Friday.

"Clearly, as a matter of arithmetic, we're going to need some combination of higher taxes or lower outlays because the current outlays are outrunning the projections of the tax revenues," Poole told a St. Louis Forum luncheon.

...more...

Since they have put IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund, now they are attempting to find ways to never pay - keep 'em working longer - maybe they will all die before they can collect :eyes:

[Warpy]

1. yeah, how old is that guy? Has he EVER done physical work?

It's different for those of us who've done jobs that are hard on our bodies, sonny, and raising our retirement age is insane.

You desk jockeys can work forever. There are limits to what our bodies can do.

[tabasco]

2. Another step closer to serfdom.

They would do away with Social Security if they could.

But raising the retirement age accomplishes about the same thing.

Boy, I can't wait to enjoy my golden retirement years at 70+ years of age.

My father died when he was 72.

[papau]

3. Reagan raised it to 67 - if raised to 70 by year 2050 then end wage cap

also.

Mortality improvements are real - but so is the need to make the financing of Social Security more progressive.

[JanusAscending]

19. I think you are in error on this statement!

If I'm not mistaken the retirement age is still 65. I retired early at 62, when Bush got into office, because I was afraid he would change it to 67. I don't believe he did it though, did he? Perhaps Reagen wanted to raise it , but never did.

[papau]

21. No-I wish I was in error 'cause it affects my clan- a 1943 birth is an

Age 66 "Normal retirement for full benefits" person and last year at 62 they were a "4 years early retirement" if they applied for benefits.

The age 67 phases in over a few years - but is in the law already - and has been in the law ever since Reagan forced the Change in 1983.

Now the really retirement age has always been age 62 - so in that sense there never has been a change, and indeed no change is planed for the early retirement age. The only effect is that you get less at 62 than you would have got before Reagan. In your case retiring at 62 in the year 2001 makes your birth date 1939, and you were screwed by having an additional reduction to your full normal retirement benefit for the extra 4 months early that Reagan deemed you were retiring early.

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10035.html

Early retirement
You can get Social Security retirement benefits as early as age 62, but if you retire before your full retirement age, your benefits will be permanently reduced, based on your age. For example, if you retire at age 62, your benefit would be about 20 percent lower than what it would be if you waited until you reach full retirement age.

Full retirement age
The “full retirement age” is 65 for people who were born before 1938. But because of longer life expectancies, the Social Security law was changed to gradually increase the full retirement age until it reaches age 67. This change affects people born in 1938 and later. Check the following table to find your full retirement age.

Age to receive full Social Security benefits

Year of birth Full retirement age

1937 or earlier.. 65

1938........... 65 and 2 months

1939 ............ 65 and 4 months

1940 ............ 65 and 6 months

1941 ............ 65 and 8 months

1942............. 65 and 10 months

1943-1954........ 66

1955 ............ 66 and 2 months

1956 .............66 and 4 months

1957............. 66 and 6 months

1958 ............ 66 and 8 months

1959............. 66 and 10 months

1960 and later... 67

NOTE: People who were born on January 1 of any year should refer to the previous year.

Remember, no matter what your full retirement age is, you still will be able to retire at age 62 if you have earned enough Social Security credits, but your monthly benefits will be permanently reduced. Some people stop working before age 62. But if they do, the years with no earnings will probably mean a lower Social Security benefit when they retire.

NOTE: Sometimes health problems force people to retire early. If you cannot work because of health problems, you should consider applying for Social Security disability benefits. The amount of the disability benefit is the same as a full, unreduced retirement benefit. If you are receiving Social Security disability benefits when you reach full retirement age, those benefits will be converted to retirement benefits

[JanusAscending]

23. Thank you for spelling it all out for everyone,.....................

like myself, who were unaware of these changes !! Boy, how stupid was I ?? Should have waited a little longer. As it stands now, I am collecting widows benefits since 2003 when my husband passed. I never would have survived on mine alone!! After one year trying to live on this benefit alone, I had to go back to work part time to supplement my income. If I didn't have a damn car payment, I wouldn't have to work at all. I 'm not sure how long I can continue to work tho' as I've developed some health problems. I told my kids, "just put me on an "ice floe" and let God take it from there! That is, when I can no longer take care of myself !! In the meantime, I'll just keep fighting the GOOD FIGHT for a FREE and SAFE America for my kids and grandkids. So..........we must all FIGHT ON !!:hi:

[papau]

24. Good luck - to us all :-)

:-)

[0007]

27. Raising the minimum wages level would help.

[Selatius]

4. Here's a damn hint, you stupid banker: RAISE FICA CAP TO 115K

You don't have to do anything radical at all. All you have to do is raise the cap from 88,000 to 115,000 and adjust for inflation after each year. This means the first 115,000 dollars of a person's income is subject to the 6.2 percent Social Security tax. Anything after that is untaxed. This is not that difficult to do.

[Burried News]

7. Spot on. And we haven't even talked about collecting from all the

"off the books" workers.

[Mithras61]

9. I fail to see why...

there should be a cap at all. If you make more than the minimum, you should pay in on everything you make. Persoannly, I think that if you're going to roll the income from FICA into the general budget, you should roll the out-go as well, and make the FICA tax graduated just like the rest of our income tax.

As I said in anopther post, living & doing business in an advanced economy means you get to pay. Taxes are how we fund the infrastructure that businesses (and the weathier people) want. If they don't want to pay taxes, let 'em go to a third world nation and build it all for themselves. The jobs are going overseas anyway (the gov't gave 'em INCENTIVES to move the jobs out!), why not make 'em take the bad along with the good?

[Selatius]

11. The FICA budget should be separated from the general budget

The only reason why it was combined into the general budget was because Johnson was trying to hide the fiscal costs of the Vietnam War by adding in the revenue from Social Security to make it look like the war wasn't eating up as big a portion of the general budget that it actually was. Since then, the Democrats have never reversed what Johnson did. I don't know why.

FICA is an insurance program to prevent the elderly from dying out on the streets of America because they didn't make enough money for retirement. You think it's bad now? Go back to the 1920s or 1930s. It is not meant to serve the same purpose as the graduated income tax, so it wouldn't apply to the argument of "making them take the bad with the good."

Rich people don't have that problem of money for retirement anyway, so FDR set up the program in this fashion in order to drive home the point that the program is by the people and for the people only. His economists of the time said that levying a payroll tax is regressive and that it shouldn't be done, that the tax should be levied on rich people, but he did it anyway because he argued that if workers themselves saw that money going out of their paycheck and that it was specifically earmarked for Social Security, then they would be psychologically assured that when they retire, that money would come back to them in the form of a Social Security check.

They get back what they paid in; therefore, it would be that much harder for Republicans or their wealthy financiers to convince people to give up Social Security by selling it to private corporations if people felt that it was their money they put into the program, not anybody else's like the rich. FDR knew what they would try to do.

[Mithras61]

13. I know all that history of SSA/FICA...

My argument is that since it currently IS part of the general budget, handle as such. Either that or separate it out and pay back the monies owed (with interest!). While you're at it, cut out the benefits to those who didn't pay in as well (my wife's paternal grandfather never paid in a dine & his wife - who never worked a day in her life - collected Social Security for 30 years after he died). If you cut the program back to what it was intended to be, it also wouldn't have the fiscal difficulties that are projected.

As for the "taking the bad with the good," that is a reference to the jobs they are sending overseas & the use of our infrastructure. You want sewers? Pay your taxes. You want roads? Same thing. You want high-speed broadband Internet, law enforcement, army/navy/air force/marines, border patrol, etc and so on? Pay your taxes! It's the cost of having an advanced infrastructure like we have in this country. The wealthy are more able to pay than the poor, so they should pay more. The same goes for corporations.

[papau]

16. until SS surplus is invest in non-gov bond assets - the accounting

will not matter.

Since the 40's gov bonds were part of the investments - and then Ike made gov bonds the only permitted investment. Since then the surplus has financed the national debt.

The accounting change to a "unified" budget had no real effect on anything other than press release numbers for the size of the deficit each year.

Invest the surplus in real estate or stocks - and do not use it to finance the national debt.

[PretzelzRule]

18. Hell, just ELIMINATE the goddamed cap!

:grr:

[sarcasmo]

22. Should be raised to 500,000 why stop at 115,000.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

28. Get rid of the cap altogether.

Even millionaires go bankrupt and they may need to participate in the serf's retirement program.

[Burried News]

5. There's a reason why the retirement age is 65 ... the average

person's body has shown major signs of aging by that point. There is a reason why one doesn't see many 65 year old nurses, construction workers, teachers etc. after 65 (and for most it isn't because they couldn't use the money. People may be living 10 years longer but it doesn't mean that a 65 year old has the body of a 55 year old.

Point two: How many employers try to get you out of their workforce before you turn 50. Who will employ a large number of 65+ year olds and who will enforce the discrimination laws when employers don't?

[MadMaddie]

8. You are right..but they count on these elderly...

to go to McDonalds or WalMart to work. When they do- they will be making too much money..


Will the madness ever stop?

[papau]

17. Full benefits at age 67 today- 70 in the future- doesn't stop age62 early

retirement.

However rather than being 3 years early as with age 65 in the past, an age 70 "full benefit age" will make age 62 8 years early.

The cut back in benefit for 8 years early is much larger than the cut back for 3 years early.

So it is a benefit cut.

And such a cut should be offset by ending the cap on wages considered for tax and benefit. The tax rate could drop 1% for both employer and employee is there was no limited on the size of the benefit - since it would be way more than offset by the extra monies paid by the rich if the wage cap did not exist.

Indeed - rather than wages, use wages plus investment income - which would allow even more of a drop in the payroll tax rate.

[zann725]

29. Ii i's NOT a benefit! Who's going to hire a 55-year old...or retain one

on payroll...when they can hire someone half their age, for half the older employer's salary (without all the elderly health complications), PLUS cut the long-accrued older employee's pension benefits. No one past 55 seriously gets hired except at McDonald's or WalMart (except perhaps a well-connected few)...as was well-parodied in the recent movie, "Fun With Dick and Jane," which sadly, realistically showed the sheer volumes of unemployed early 40-ish mid-management exec's desparately clawing for ONE job...waiting a year or more for even ONE job offer, however minimal...IS a present-day fact.

Even at 62, this is a VERY LATE retirement age in the current "outsourced" economy. In the 1940's through 1970's perhaps, many people were able to stay at companies for 30+ years, and retire on a company pension, with some savings even. Since the Reagan-era however, with outsourced/reduced jobs, and health plans, and gutting of pension plans among a LARGE portion of corporate America, there exists a gap of perhaps 15-20 years from lay-off (due to age) for the average worker...until the beginning of Social Security at 68-70. And what will these unemployed workers live on in the interim? Most live paycheck-to-paycheck in long-overdue minimum wage hikes, and overall downsizing at even management wages; and reduction/elimination of overtime in many states and instances for the average (now) NON-unionized worker. Even the best-"preserved" 50+ year old does NOT make a good job interview "impression" to a young 20-early 30-ish Boss/Interviewer.

Moving back retirement age serves NO ONE but the Elite who've already IOU'd our SS Trust Fund for THEIR own "rich boy" money investment plans such as war, and money-laundering.

[shoelace414]

6. We could get rid of Social security if...

people just worked until they die.

[SammyWinstonJack]

14. That's the plan, isn't it? Or the plan the repugs want anyway,

[Cobalt Violet]

10. With healthcare out of reach of more and more, no need to raise the age.

More and more will not live long enough anyway.

[Bigmack]

12. Still after Social Security....

... ALL the "iou's" (actually Treasury Bonds) in the SS trustfund could have been redeemed by EITHER removing Dimson's tax break for the rich OR not pissing away the money in Iraq. About $1.5 Trillion either way.

Read "The Plot Against Social Security" by Michael Hiltzik

Everything is related to killing Social Security.

[oscar111]

15. NO RETIREMENT in mid 1800's, IIRC. So why not again, GOP muses

So i wager they are thinking.

work till you drop.

I think, in many corporate nations today, there is NO retirement at all.

anyone have the hard data on that?

I recall reading a few yrs back, that Guatemala had zero social aid programs. Or one of the neighboring nations.. fuzzy on this item, check it out before quoting.

[54anickel]

20. Great, now I've got Archie and Edith singing "Those Were the Days"

stuck in my cranium!

[Odin2005]

25. Get rid of the damn cap.

IIRC, the purpose of the cap was that FDR needed to trick the fiscal conservatives into thinking FICA wasn't a redistributive tax.

[LiberalHeart]

26. Two Social Security employees told me....

...if I took early retirement, thus cutting my benefit forever, my benefit could still go up if I got some income on which I paid SS during my early retirement. It requires a higher form of math than I'm capable of to figure out how much I'd have to earn to make a significant difference in my benefits.

Ultimately, though, I decided against applying for early retirement based on advice from my broker who did some research on it. The results of his research were that early SS is a good thing for men; slightly less beneficial for women (due to their life expectancy versus that of men). One analysis came down even more strongly on the side of women delaying SS.

[screembloodymurder]

30. Fool me once shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me. Keep trying to fool me, and you're a scumbag who took my money, spent it and now wants to weasel out of his obligations.