Here's one of the reasons why we need to change Social Security
benefits for future retirees:
Roughly 10,000 Baby Boomers now reach nominal retirement age (65) every day—this
will keep happening for the next 15 years, until the youngest Baby Boomer
reaches age 65 in 2029.
In the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and even in the 1980s, no one in
government or anywhere else ever thought that all these tens of millions of
Baby Boomers would live long enough to collect Social Security benefits for years
and years.
There isn’t enough money on the surface of the planet to pay all
current working Americans a Social Security retirement check according to the
current schedule of benefits.
We need to raise Social Security taxes—now—and reduce future payments
to future retirees—now. Apologies to the young folks who are just entering the
work force, and to those who are only mid-way through their work careers.
Historical note: in 1935, when the Social Security Act was signed by
President Roosevelt, the government’s actuaries privately estimated that half
of Americans wouldn’t live long enough to collect any benefits. The first
monthly Social Security benefit check, for $22.54, was issued in January 1940.
The recipient, Ida May Fuller, had paid a total of $24.75 in Social Security
taxes during her working career, and before she died in 1975 she received $22,888.92
from the Social Security administration.
Here’s another aside: although it’s true that seniors are working longer (past age 65) than anyone ever guessed they would, still they’re going
to retire sometime. Last year, for example, the Social Security Administration
noted that “By 2015, almost 33 percent of our workforce, including 48 percent
of our supervisors, will be eligible to retire. In FY [fiscal year] 2011, we
lost over 4,000 employees due to retirement and other reasons. We expect this
trend to continue. During this same time frame, the baby boomer retirement wave
continues to have a significant effect on our workloads.”
