Congressman Stephen Lynch released a YouTube video sharing his thoughts on Social Security. The 2-minute, 22-second video closes with a passage that, unless I’m misunderstanding something, can only be construed as a call for increasing the retirement age for Social Security. Fast forward to the 1:44 mark for this closing passage:
We do have to recognize that when Social Security was established in 1935, the average life expectancy for women was 65. For men, it was 62, I believe. And, nowadays, for kids born today, the ages are, I think, 87 and 91 for women. So, obviously, with the life expectancy expanding for beneficiaries, we’re going to have to make some changes there. But I think those are small changes over a long period of time will keep Social Security’s promise to future generations.
Earlier in the video, Lynch also references what he calls the need to “make certain tweaks in the system.” If Lynch was referring to uncapping FICA or means-testing beneficiaries, he would be speaking in dollar figures or years of solvency, not ages. Is there a reasonable conclusion other than Stephen Lynch is proposing increasing the retirement age by some measure over some period of time? Perhaps Congressman Lynch will clarify these “changes” and “tweaks” over the course of the special election’s primary campaign.
A gradual increase in the SS retirement age, phased in over a period of time, is the right thing to do. It’s been done already and the world didn’t end. Similarly, the cap on SS the SS withholding tax should be removed gradually. The two changes, together, are a relatively painless way to solve the actuarial challenges that face SS.
That’s why SS should NOT be on the table during discussions of “entitlement reform” (unless these two changes are what’s meant).
If you’re in the top half income earners, you’re life expectancy has gone up. If you’re in the bottom half…not so much.
Actually, you know what? Ezra does a better job than me explaining this.
Here’s the link.
http://youtu.be/f0n6yP5xzcE
Life expectancy is greater for high income than low income workers in US
http://news.yahoo.com/us-life-expectancy-depends-income-study-finds-175444763.html
And life expectancy for least educated whites in the US has declined by 4 years over last 2 decades
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less-educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Raising the retirement age for SS and/or Medicare is one of the worst ideas going. It will cost us all much more than it will supposedly save, beyond the pain it will cause. And it will keep people in the workforce longer, many against their will, and thus failing to free up jobs for the young. Just incredibly stupid policy all around.
I need to know more about these “life expectancy” figures before deciding whether I can support a rise in the retirement age for Social Security. We don’t know, for example, how much of the increase had to do with fewer deaths from childhood diseases.
One useful data point would be how the average life expectancy has changed for people who have reached retirement age. Social Security Administration shows 13.1 years for a 65-year-old man in 1950 and 16.2 years for a woman in 1950. They now estimate that a 65-year-old man today will live another 18 years and a woman another 20.
That is a significant actuarial change. Just looking at the data, it makes sense to increase the retirement age. Unfortunately, in the real world, there are a lot of people who can’t work into their late 60s. I’d rather fund this by raising taxes on SS benefits for wealthier recipients.
This is another example where we need to be quite clear about differentiating “wealth” and “income”.
Social Security benefits are already taxed at higher rates for higher income recipients — the portion of benefits beyond the “base” are treated as ordinary income, and that ordinary income is taxed progressively.
I suggest that just as there are people who can’t work to age 70, there are also those can’t work to the current retirement age of 67 — we already demand that a 67 year old steelworker continue working (though many find another profession).
In short, the actuarial data that supported the increase of the retirement age to its current 67 ALSO now support an increase to something like 70. Whatever demographic disparities exist for a retirement age of 70 are not significantly different from disparities that have existed all along.
I do not think we should use the need to address a straightforward actuarial issue with an opportunity to “fix” the demographics of Social Security. I think we should instead adjust the payroll tax and retirement age so that the Social Security system remains sustainable.
If we want to change the demographic impact of Social Security, I think we should tackle that as its own issue. While I agree that the issue is real, in my view the real driver of that issue is wealth concentration. If we fix THAT problem, the demographic challenges of Social Security mostly solve themselves.
Steve should know better than expect people to climb steel at say, age 66.
They can just be elected president of the local and stop climbing steel. If they do it right, by the time they’re 66 they’ll have been in Congress for years already.
we just don’t show enough initiative.
was on CNBC yesterday wondering why he and his wife can collect $48,000 a year from SS.
Frank Langone is an actor I think
Unfortunately as joelpatterson and others have pointed out, by removing it as an entitlement it becomes just another anti-poverty program the middl class can vote to cut in bad times.
Perhaps the deductions for the rich could be cut be a corresponding amount to ensure that money isn’t wasted. I’m sure the Republicans, so passionate about abuse of federal dollars, would go for that.
they will be lining up to go for that.
Did you see them in DC saying they want to “address the deficit”…with more tax cuts for the rich?
and almost universally loved, while Social Security (while still popular) is railed against by a larger minority.
Someone who had a great job and was able to retire with a large cushion simply doesn’t rely on social security and won’t need to — for a number of people, the money they get from social security is incidental.
Medicare, on the other hand, still very much matters to a sizable number of these people, who may be wealthy, but not so wealthy that they’d have the hundreds of thousands or millions to deal with health crises in their old age. So, even retired people in the 1% depend on their medicare.
To me, that’s not only an argument to make sure everyone gets social security, but a great reason to *expand* it and turn it into a real social pension program.
We’re going to find out in another 5, 10, 15, and 20 years how royally screwed people are when all they have is 401(k) and social security. It’s not going to be enough, and I think there’s going to be a critical mass of people who realize that, forcing us to dramatically rethink the way we get people to retire.
I would think it’d be the reverse where Social Security and Medicare are viewed favorable since even conservatives use and enjoy them (remember: “get government off my medicare!”). Its Medicaid and Obamacare that scare people since they resent that those programs help poor people.
Medicare is incredibly popular – pretty much the most popular thing the government does, and it’s because not only does everyone eventually use it, but almost everyone actually and desperately *needs* it.
That’s not quite as much of the case for wealthier old people and Social Security, which is only a small portion of their income.
I saw a chart on this once (with an article that accompanied it) that explained why those wealthier seniors and borderline-seniors supported Medicare in vast numbers, but not so with Social Security.
I wish I still had it, because I think it explains a lot about why Medicare is less at risk of being eaten by the government (and in fact was greatly expanded by a Republican President), while elites (who won’t ever depend on Social Security) are salivating at raiding the Social Security piggy bank one last time, as they reduce benefits for seniors because they think seniors will be content to swap cans of tuna for cans of catfood.
That definitely clarified you’re point, I guess there are a significant number of middle income Americans that still have good pensions and 401ks. To me the issue is important for three reasons.
1) It’s my parents sole income, and if anyone is more deserving/not mooching its them
2) I doubt my generation will have generous 401ks, I just got laid off from the only company I worked for that offered one, its unlikely the next job will have it, and most private sector companies are cutting back significantly on them so SS will be needed
3) These Randian budget terrorists and their enablers in the press are ideologically opposed to it and will invent whatever crises they need to in order to defund it, there are lots of great reform options on the table, none of which are being proposed by this centrist President or his reactionary foes
If it’s an insurance program, then you shouldn’t have your benefits cut just because you’re wealthy, any more than a private pension program can cut your benefits because you have other income. However, they should be taxed at a higher rate than someone with a lower income.
It would be better to continue to pay the founder of Home Depot $48k per year but charge him more in payroll taxes due to his high wages over the course of his career.
The $48k is a drop in the bucket, but removing it will make SS into a program for “those people”.
A zombie has eaten SomervilleTom!
I’m aware of the argument that afertig makes. In a different world, I would support it. We remain attached to a free-market model for allocating health care — that attachment guarantees that poor people will have lower life expectancy than rich people. We remain attached to a free-market model for allocating food, education, and shelter. That attachment similarly guarantees that poor people will have lower life expectancy than rich people.
Even if we solve the wealth concentration problem, which I argue is the central issue facing us (leaving aside climate change for the moment), we will still have poor people and those poor people will still have lower life expectancy than the wealthy.
I think that an imperfect social security system that benefits some more than others is preferable to no social security system at all. If we don’t put the system on a sound actuarial basis, it will fail.
The right wing has been trying to destroy social security since its inception. If someone can describe an approach to social security that addresses the objection of afertig and has a sound actuarial basis I’m all ears. Without that proposed approach, opposing the two changes I suggest plays into the hands of the right-wing attack on Social Security.
In the most aggressive “doom and gloom” scenarios of Social Security, it’s going to be able to fund its benefits for decades. Decades! There’s simply no reason for doom and gloom. None.
Wealth concentration is certainly the central problem… but continuing to accept the GOP framing on this issue is distracting from that.
We shouldn’t be talking about limiting Social Security, we should be talking about expanding it.
First, I don’t think I’m talking about “doom and gloom”. I’m also not talking about “raiding the piggy bank”, privatizing, or anything else.
According to multiple sources like this 2010 report from the trustees, the future of SS without changes is not so rosy as you assert (emphasis mine):
2020 is seven years away — not “Decades!”.
We agree that wealth concentration is the central problem. I also agree we should be talking about expanding it — if you mean, for example, expanding medicare/medicaid coverage. I do not agree that I am embracing the “GOP framing” of the SS issue, and I do not think I’m talking about “limiting” it.
I think the first step we should take is to remove the ceiling on the payroll tax (phased in over a period of years). The SS payroll tax is terribly regressive, precisely because of the existing cap. A high-income earner who pays taxes on, say, $1M of income should pay $62,000 on that income — his or her employers (in the unlikely event that the income is from wages and salary) should pay the same. Today, that high-income earner pays only $7,106.25. That’s WRONG and should be fixed.
I’m open to alternative ways to address the retirement age question. The statistics of life expectancy calculation are not trivial. As imperfect as a brute-force calculation is, I’m not aware of a better alternative. There will be demographic disparities in ANY calculation of life expectancy — do we therefore not do it? If not, then why is 67 (the current age) better than, say, 45 or 75? I think it comes down to a straightforward actuarial calculation. The calculation itself is above my paygrade, but it does exist.
My point remains that removing the ceiling on the payroll tax and (perhaps) phasing in a small increase in the retirement age are NOT “doom and gloom”, they are not “accept[ing] the GOP framing”, and are not the kind of thing we should go to the mat about.
If you hear me suggest I’m receptive to SS privatization, then please DO call in the exorcist to rid me of the evil GOP spirit that has taken me over. I don’t think these comments from Mr. Lynch rise to that level.
is the problem of big money corrupting our political system. Which results in a political system that benefits the wealthy over the average person. Which then leads to increasing inequality.
Which is why I worked so hard for Elizabeth Warren 🙂
1. We have absolutely no idea what the life expectancy of people born today will be, but I highly doubt it’s going to be 87 for men and 91 for women. That’s wishful thinking.
2. Today’s life expectancy numbers are incredibly misleading. Sure, people who get to sit in comfy chairs are living longer and able to work longer, with jobs that may be fun for them and are not physically demanding, so they can do it well into their golden years.
The truth is, though, that the real hard working people in this country, who live pay check to pay check, 1) aren’t living that much longer and 2) aren’t able to work any longer, because they are doing back breaking work and their bodies eventually go out.
3) There is simply no reason to change social security now, or for some time to come. It’s solvent and will be for decades. The only reason to change it now is to raid the piggy bank and steal from the promises that have been paid by the American people, who have forked over their money for a level of benefits that was guaranteed to them.
If and when we ever face a real crisis, we can solve that problem then, and we can do it through sensible measures, like lifting or eliminating the $100,000 contribution cap. If anything, that should already be lifted or eliminated.
I am really trying to avoid coming on here to rebut the constant attacks from Helman, but I want to make Rep. Lynch’s position on social security very clear.
Congressman Lynch signed both the Grayson-Tanaka letter and the Progressive Caucus letter last month because he does not believe the answer to our budget woes is to make changes to social security.
He doesn’t say anything about raising the retirement age in the video, just points out that average life expectancy has increased, and thus some minor tweaks may be needed down the line to Social Security funding. Rep. Lynch does NOT support raising the retirement age for Social Security.
…if you think there is the need to set the record straight. I don’t think Mat made that unreasonable an inference in this diary and I for one am open to raising the age, though I’d first prefer to remove the cap and I want Medicare to go the other direction, ideally to age zero. Right now I think the only regular BMGer who is a legitimate Lynch suppporter is Striker57 so I think more would be welcome. Dan from Waltham is a horrible surrogate and many of us question his motives. Better yet, Congressman Lynch should come personally to BMG to introduce himself as Congressman Markey and various other candidates for many offices have done.
He can win the nomination without BMG but he cannot win the general without bringing his progressive primary foes to the table. And the fact that I prefer Lynch to the Republican alternatives, even one I respect like Dan Winslow, has stayed my hand from attacking more vigorously. I also tremendously respect Striker57 for his input and that he is a genuine voice of organized labor on a blog that is sympathetic to it but I suspect made up mostly of non-union members. And I respect Lynch’s labor record. If he came on here he could get a fair hearing, and it would give him exposure to hostile questions he would need for the general.
Conor – Thank you for sharing your comment, though I would sooner characterize my concern as a “valid question” rather than a “constant attack.” Social Security is an extremely important program, I would argue a bedrock of our economic stability. As such, when a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who is running for U.S. Senate calls for “changes” and “tweaks” in the program, I take it very seriously.
First, to correct something in your comment, Rep. Lynch did NOT say, as you put it in your comment, that “minor tweaks may be needed down the line.” His exact words were “we do need to make certain tweaks in the system” and “we’re going to have to make some changes there.” He did not say changes “may” be needed, as you a bit misleadingly put it. He was speaking in certainties.
So, please clarify for us, if Rep. Lynch is not talking about raising the retirement age, what tweaks was he referring to when he said with certainty that “we do need to make certain tweaks in the system” and what changes was he referring to when he said with certainty that “we’re going to have to make some changes there”? You have our full attention.
Congressman Stephen F. Lynch (D-MA), a candidate for U.S. Senate, today called for the cap on social security contributions to be raised at an accelerated rate. In 2013, only the first $113,700 of income is subject to the Social Security tax. Congressman Lynch believes that the cap should be increased at a more accelerated pace in order to better fund the Social Security system.
“Social Security is a sacred promise passed from one generation to the next,” Rep. Lynch said. “Americans now are living longer than ever, and about one third of all seniors rely on Social Security for most of what they earn in retirement. We need to ensure that Social Security will be there for our current retirees, as well as future generations.”
“We cannot cut benefits, and we cannot raise the retirement age. Instead, we must focus on the way Social Security is funded,” Lynch continued. “In 1983, 90% of wages in this country were subject to the Social Security tax . As a result, this critical safety net was on more solid footing. But despite an explosion in wages for the wealthiest 1% of Americans over the last 30 years, funding for Social Security has not kept pace.”
Rep. Lynch noted that the wage base cap did not increase at all from 2009-2011, and increased by just $3,600 from 2012-2013. “We have been raising the cap in small increments, but it’s not enough. The Chief Actuary of Social Security estimates that, to get back to the 90% rates we had under President Reagan, the cap should be raised to $214,500. Until we get that cap up, the burden for funding Social Security will continue to fall disproportionally on the middle class and lower income earners.”
Rep. Lynch also noted his opposition to proposals for chained CPI, which would place a significant burden on seniors who rely on social security. “Chained CPI would limit cost of living adjustments for retirees, and hurt seniors who must pay for costly medical care,” Lynch said. “We simply cannot increase the cost burden for seniors.”
“When they talk about Social Security in Washington, the Republicans always focus on slashing benefits or raising the retirement age. That won’t help working people like my dad or my fellow ironworkers, who spend 30 years in backbreaking labor before retiring. Getting funding levels back to where they were 30 years ago will help ensure that the promise of Social Security can be kept for future generations.”
Conor – Again, thank you for your post. This level of specifics is appreciated. But it does raise the question: why wasn’t any of this – specifically more speedily raising the wage base cap and opposing chained CPI – mentioned in the Social Security video to begin with? Are these positions that Congressman Lynch has firmed up in just the last week since the video went up? Also, does accelerating the increase in the wage base cap represent the entirety of the “changes” and “tweaks” Congressman Lynch referenced in his video, or are there other modifications to Social Security that the Congressman is considering? Thanks again for your ongoing efforts to clarify Congressman Lynch’s position on this critically important issue.
We recorded many videos on many issues, and they were completely unscripted. Not every position was covered in detail.
Conor – This wasn’t Congressman Lynch speaking off-the-cuff to a media gaggle after an event. This was a prepared video released by the campaign – even if it was “unscripted” – that the campaign posted on its Issues page. Do you appreciate that Congressman Lynch haphazardly talking about “changing” and “tweaking” Social Security on his Issues page would legitimately raise questions about what those changes and tweaks are? Given that the Lynch campaign is posting on its Issues page incomplete, stream-of-consciousness YouTube videos on serious issues – with you yourself conceding that “not every position was covered in detail” – please don’t take offense when people ask for those details on those positions.
All that said, going back to my question above, especially considering that you’re conceding that “not every position was covered in detail,” does accelerating the increase in the wage base cap represent the entirety of the “changes” and “tweaks” Congressman Lynch referenced in his video, or are there other modifications to Social Security that the Congressman is considering?
Again, quite sincerely, thank you for responding to these questions to clarify Congressman Lynch’s positions on Social Security.