13 May 2010

Social Security and Medicare in the 21st Century

If you're age 55 or over, nothing changes. You get full benefits and continue paying the Social Security and Medicare (SS&M) taxes as under the current contract, or law.

If you're age 40 to 55, you have an option:
  • pay 67% of current SS&M taxes and receive 50% benefits, or
  • pay no more SS&M taxes, get a one-time refundable tax credit of 50% of those paid so far, and receive no benefits
If you're under age 40, you get a one-time refundable tax credit of all the SS&M taxes you've paid, and you are released from the contract. No more SS&M taxes, no benefits.

The percentages can be tweaked, but these seem pretty fair to me, and we all know that, even now, the benefits payable under these programs bear no relationship to the revenues collected as payroll taxes.

3 comments:

  1. I think you're gonna have to refigure there...

    Most folks by age 50 have reached a point where they are not physically able to continue working at levels they did when younger. So have already paid in at their "max" salary levels. Those folk are owed a lot more than a 50% "credit". You want to pay back what they paid in with interest?...didn't think so...

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  2. Actually, what they paid in, with interest, will still probably be less than current projected benefits from age 55 on, so sure.

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  3. Howdy! One thing your plans shares with all other private citizens' ideas is that this could readily work, might be quite palatable to the public, and is way beyond what DC is willing to try.

    However, it would be interesting to run the simulation to see; my concern is that you STILL won't be able to pay for what the older generations are owed because more-than-90% of the remaining generations will pull out of SSN as fast as they could.

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