How would you "fix" Social Security?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Since it's supposedly going to be insolvent in a few decades if nothing is done.

My initial thoughts: Raise if not eliminate the payroll tax cap , reform America's immigration system to make it easier and simpler for more immigrants to come here (more workers = more economic growth = more revenue), and stimulate demand in the domestic economy through agressive fiscal policy (muh multiplier effect).

[LivinFree]

scrap the whole program, easy

[mencken]

Allow new people paying into the program to earmark their Social Security payments to specific individuals. Inspired by the second comment:

[DC Al Fine]

The most important fix I can think of is allowing Social Security to invest like a normal pension plan. Investing in more than US government bonds would increase.

The other fix I'd look at is is changing how benefits are calculated. Social Security is calculated as a % of your Average Inflation-adjusted Monthly Earnings or, AIME. Brackets in are roughly:
$0-$800: 90%
$800-$4800: 32%
$4800+: 15%

AIME is based on your best 35 years earnings. I would look at doing one or both of:
1) Increasing the numbers of years included in the AIME calculation, to reduce the effect of a few high earning years closer to retirement.

2) Lowering the threshold between the middle and upper brackets. People who earn above the median household income should have more responsibility for their retirement than the poor.

[DC Al Fine]

Also, this isn't really a fix, but I really wish America would separate out the pension plan and redistribution/minimum income aspects of their retirement. In the Canadian system, there is very little redistribution involved in calculating pension benefits from the Canada Pension Plan. The pensions paid out to ensure a minimum income to poor seniors are paid out of general revenues.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Easy: raise more revenue through a progressive income tax and closing off loopholes, and use it to fund Social Security.

[ingemann]

Kill everybody over 70.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

Since it's supposedly going to be insolvent in a few decades if nothing is done.

They say that every few years and lately we've done nothing... and it is still solvent.  So... do nothing?

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http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/18/5-facts-about-social-security/

[OSR stands with Israel]

Cut 25% of the budget then use like 10% of what you cut and put it in social security .

[Clark Kent]

Privatize it

[Mercenary]

I'd change it to operate in a similar manner to what public employees get.
In Washington state the public employee retirement system while still not great I think is superior to the social security system. Granted this is just the retirement component of SS and not say the disability element as far as I know. Still, I liked how it was more individualized and how you can look up your account and see your balance and to an extent you could control how your funds were invested. It is restricted though, more or less it is like invested in mutual funds, it isn't 100% control but it was enough that I felt satisfied with it as a plan and with an actual balance that was in your name you knew what you were getting instead of worrying about whether you'd get anything at all due to solvency. This was just half the program though, the employee contribution side. The employer contribution was still defined benefit, which I would change to operate the same way as the employee side contribution.

But you couldn't really change this all at once for everyone. Rather just phase it in and to increase solvency during the transition we could uncap the SS tax on payroll.

[RINO Tom]

Start by raising the retirement age.  It was made when life expectancy was WAY lower than it is today.  If you want to index things like the minimum wage to inflation, well that stuff works both ways.

[ingemann]

Privatize it

My suggestion was far more humane than you people's suggestion.

[Del Tachi]

(1)  Raise the retirement age to 70 for those born in 1976 or later. 
(2)  Switch from CPI to the chained CPI in order to calculate the COLA
(3)  Increase the number of working years to calculate benefit from 35 to 38
(4)  Require all new state and local employees to enroll in Social Security
(5)  Re-institute the college benefit
(6)  Remove the upper-income caps on FICA, subject all income to the Social Security tax

[Green Line]

Raise the retirement age to 75

[RFayette]

Privatize it

[PJ]

Eliminate the tax cap and transform the program into a more universal system with a retirement age of 60.

Raise the retirement age to 75

A substantial proportion of the population is going to die before they reach that age.

[Green Line]

A substantial proportion of the population is going to die before they reach that age.

It's still below the average life expectancy.  Sounds fair to me.

[DC Al Fine]

Privatization can mean many things. Pro privatization folks, do you mean leaving retirement savings to individual initiative, or do you mean creating individual investment accounts that social security taxes would pay into?

[PJ]

A substantial proportion of the population is going to die before they reach that age.

It's still below the average life expectancy. Sounds fair to me.

It's less than 4 years under the average (American) life expectancy. It shouldn't be anywhere near that number. To expect people to work well into their seventies, which depending on the job, they very well may be physically unable to do, is insane. Raising the retirement age would worsen unemployment and once reaching retirement age, the average American would only have a meager three years of retirement, assuming they even live to that age. What would even be the point of retaining the program at that point, if you're going to be so tight fisted that its benefits are minuscule or in many cases nonexistent?

[Mr. Reactionary]

Social Security is solvent, the retirement age stays the same, AND the payroll tax rate gets cut.

[Donald Trump 2016 !]

Phase it out. Issue a government bond to people when they reach their retirement age based on how much money they've paid into the social security system over the course of their lifetime. People get what they're entitled to. Abolish the payroll tax and stop funding social security. Then institute a negative income tax and expand the EITC. Make sure that people who who were either not careless to properly save for retirement or went bankrupt due to medical bills, making foolish investments, etc. have a source of income so that they can afford food, housing, heating, etc.  Shifting these costs onto the government is much more effective than making working people and their employers pay directly into an unstable government program funded by a flat (in reality a regressive) tax. If retired people want to continue working, give them a wage enhancement through the EITC. The negative income tax and EITC can be paid for by a combination of the eliminating of social security funding, eliminating spending on government transfers for welfare (due to the implementation of the negative income tax), and raising income taxes.


1. It's ridiculous that the government should decide what percentage of one's income should be put away for their retirement. What else can and should the government decide for people? A percentage of what they should pay for food? Water? Housing?

2. The primary funding of Social Security is the payroll tax, a tax which is capped and was paid years in advance by people who chose to forego higher education and start their working careers right out of High School. Theses working people have paid anywhere from 4-10 years of payroll taxes than somebody who sought a Bachelor's/Master's/Professional/Doctorate/etc. This makes payroll taxes not just flat, but regressive. The incentive to pursue higher education is already established given the fact that these people will earn more over the course of their lifetimes than others. Therefore this payroll tax incentive is moot. If an elderly person decides to continue working and forego retirement for a few years, they have to pay payroll taxes on their income to fund a program that they don't currently benefit from because they chose to work. What a perverse incentive.

3. The government has raided the social security trust fund and invested the money into projects. These projects are often pork barrel spending projects to get Congressperson X reelected. This money should be set aside and not invested, but the government has decided otherwise. The government isn't a safe institution to trust with social security when there's a giant pile of cash there for them to use at their disposal.

4. In 1950, the average life expectancy for an American was about 68 years and the worker:retiree ratio was 16:1. Today, the average life expectancy is 78 and that same ratio is about 3:1 and will continue declining as more and more baby boomers retire. This is simply an unstable system.

5. Three sources of the payroll tax are declining. Teenage employment has been declining. More and more High School graduates are choosing to obtain a college degree and forego work and/or work less hours than their predecessors while in school; they either aren't paying into the system or paying less. Illegal immigrants are often paid under the table and don't contribute to payroll taxes. Also Increasing income inequality hurts the steady stream of social security funding due to the fact that the payroll tax is capped at roughly 120,000.

[Making America Great Again]

Make sure Americans are getting it and not illegals.