Poll: The Best Way to Keep Social Security Solvent

[dolstein]

[Terwilliger]

1. other: divert money from defense for social security

dont cut other social programs to fun it

[flamingyouth]

2. I'll vote for that option!

:-)

[KG]

3. beat me to it.

cutting the defense budget say, in half, would adequately fund it for decades, i would think. probably be plenty left over for universal health care and free post secondary education too!

[Junkdrawer]

4. Repeal the Tax cuts...

Nothing would make Social Security solvent, but paying off a good bit of the national debt could have better prepared us for the deficit spending to come. Instead, they just looted the place BEFORE the crisis hit.

[dolstein]

5. I support raising the retirement age

The retirement age is already scheduled to increase from 65 to 67, but even that doesn't fully account for the increase in life expectancy since social security was first implemented.

The fact is, new retirees can expect to receive social security benefits for a longer period of time than previous generations of social security recipients. I simply don't see why new retirees are more deserving than previous generations of recipients, who fought two world wars and had to endure the Great Depression. Other than Vietnam War veterans (for whom I'd be willing to make an exception) can we honestly say that retiring baby boomers have had to make the great sacrifices made by previous generations? I don't think so.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Not fair to people who do manual labor

If you, say, work for a moving company, you're not going to want to be loading trucks much past 65.

[rhite5]

7. Raising the Cap - it's a no-brainer

[0rganism]

8. Perhaps the dedicated payroll flat tax is itself a lousy idea?

And the cap on the tax, intended to limit lifetime benefits, just turns it into an even more regressive burden. I guess it's necessary to disguise the fund as an investment in government bonds, and it theoretically keeps the money safe from being discretionaried into oblivion, but there are more efficient and fair ways to handle welfare.

[burr]

9. The long-term solution is raising taxrate.

In the short run eliminating the cap will only delay the problem, but it will be necessary. But as in the 80's when the program was expected to go bust, raising the tax rate..just a little will bring huge surpluses back into the trust fund. This is a fairer solution than means-testing a program which may no longer have an income cap on the FICA tax, and it would be much better than again raising the retirement age.