To liberals: With the baby boomers beginning to retire, do you think reforms need to be made to the public system? If so, how would you reform Social Security while protecting seniors?
The simplest thing to do would be to reform the payroll tax into a uncapped progressive tax
Take away the cap and the problem is solved. Easiest budgetary issue ever.
Solved only until the government has to start handing out million dollar Social Security checks to retired corporate CEOs (or were you going to keep a cap on payouts instead of continuing to link them to what you paid in [save for the very poor who receive more than what the formula calls for]). And actually if we did do that, it wouldn't add that much. There aren't that many people who earn more than the cap in wages.
No the simplest solution is to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is in the middle of raising the age for full benefits to age 67. That can be sped up and at the same time raise the age for full benefits to age 70 and for partial benefits from 62 to 65.
