The right problem and the right solution

The right problem and the right solution

by digby

A smart writer makes an important argument about Social Security:

For decades, the burden of retirement saving and planning has been shifted onto individuals, having them accumulate money in 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), instead of the defined benefit programs which were common only a couple decades ago. The results have not been good. People fail to save enough, and one crisis, such as spell of unemployment or bad health, can lead them to empty out their retirement accounts, despite the significant penalties for doing so.
This reality has inspired proposals for new forms of retirement accounts, with various means of funding and varying degrees to which the programs are mandatory, but we’re missing the simple answer.

We already have an excellent, if not especially generous, program in place. Workers contribute during their working lives in exchange for a promised benefit level during their retirement years. This program is called Social Security.

Instead of considering some exciting new program to try to encourage workers into saving more, another Rube Goldberg incentive contraption designed to nudge individual behavior in the right direction, we should increase the level of retirement benefits in the existing Social Security program.

That sounds like blasphemy because we’ve all been fed the myth that Social Security is bankrupt. It is almost universally accepted in policy circles and in the pundit class that strengthening Social Security involves cutting future benefits relative to what current law promises because according to current projections, Social Security only has the ability to pay promised benefits in full until 2033, and then 75% of them thereafter. The basic thinking is that we must promise to cut benefits now so that we won’t necessarily have to cut them 22 years from now. What?

Imagine if that is how we treated defense spending. Since it appears budgets will be tight in the 2030s, best to mothball all those aircraft carriers today. Who would buy that argument?

The reality is that we will make our defense decisions about the 2030s in the 2030s. That’s just how we should treat federally financed retirement programs. We never actually have to cut benefits if we make the policy choice to keep funding them.
Social security is only bankrupt to the extent that our political leaders lose the will to invest in a decent retirement for American workers.

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As the system exists, large numbers of Americans nearing retirement will have little more than fairly meager Social Security benefits (the average benefit for retired workers is currently $1230) to survive on in their old age. We can doom them to a life of insecurity and relative poverty or we can take the obvious step to improve their lives: Increase Social Security benefits.

Seriously, if it weren’t for the radical wingnut faction in this country we’d just do the simple thing and raise the cap and raise social security benefits so they’re adequate for people to live decently in their retirement years. It’s not brain surgery.

Oh, and by the way, the smart writer is a guy named Duncan Black. And he’s scored a weekly column! (They’re taking over I tells yah …)

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