Benefit Increases Supported
One benefit increase proposal also got robust bipartisan support:
- Raising the Minimum Benefit: 64% (Republicans 59%, Democrats 71%) favored increasing the minimum monthly benefit for someone who has worked 30 years from $951 to $1,341, increasing the shortfall by 7%.
Other benefit increases received more modest support:
- Increasing Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs): 55% (Republicans 55%, Democrats 59%) favored changing the way COLAs are calculated by focusing on the goods and services that older adults tend to buy, which would make them higher than the current method. This would increase the shortfall by 12%.
- Increasing Benefits for the Very Old: 53% (Republicans 53%, Democrats 56%), favored increasing benefits for those over 80 by about 5%, increasing the shortfall by 5%.
- Take the survey yourself: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6842663/Social-Security-2022
SEE ALSO:
• Social Security Gains Another Year of Solvency: 2022 Trustees Report
• Social Security Benefits Lose 40% of Buying Power Since 2000; Latest 2023 COLA Estimate Drops
Veteran financial services industry journalist Brian Anderson joined 401(k) Specialist as Managing Editor in January 2019. He has led editorial content for a variety of well-known properties including Insurance Forums, Life Insurance Selling, National Underwriter Life & Health, and Senior Market Advisor. He has always maintained a focus on providing readers with timely, useful information intended to help them build their business.
Hi Brian,
One change makes a better, actuarially sound program that uses current taxes to invest a small portion of Americans’ Social Security taxes in the stock market (the world’s greatest wealth generator). This is what 58% of Americans want according to the recent Social Security survey (Note: 58% desiring this method is hard for ANY politician to go against.)
Social Security is already broken – BUT NOT in the way you are thinking. Social Security has a $255 death benefit (added by Roosevelt’s female Secretary of Labor)to pay for the funeral costs. During the pandemic, this amount( unchanged for 85 years) proved insufficient. Hence, the Administration had to use Federal EMERGENCY Management money to pay the funeral costs which Social Security should have paid. Because our politicians did not maintain a meaningful benefit, this failure proves the benefit needs to be redesigned and people usually use life insurance for a funeral expense, How we can achieve a redesigned life insurance component is enumerated in my comments to SEC Regs. S7-25-19 published 02/03/2020. Further comments are elaborated in Advisor Perspectives article “A Proposal to Address Wealth and Health Inequality”.
The use of life insurance leverages money and offers these additional domestic benefits including but not limited to: a national debt solution, starting retirement at birth, reducing Medicare and Medicaid entitlement costs, increased medical research funding, increased investment participation for all Americans, increased Social Security retirement payments, provide economic stimulus to the States/municipalities during pandemic(s), increased financial services diversity and compliance, and resolve the Black Lives matter concerns. Tacit Congressional approval exists.
This was also proposed to refute Build Back Better and CT’s Insurance Commissioner has institutionalized the use of tax money to train and aid minorities through the CT Broker Academy for health insurance. (This copies my 2-3-2020 proposal for life insurance.)
SUMMARIZING OVERVIEW – Civilizations have prospered when a people develop an economic benefit that their citizens and others beyond their borders (See Europe, China, Russia, etc.) need. As the civilization’s economy grew and prospered, there was a separation between rich and poor which grew larger in the ensuing years. The rich became more powerful but as the number of poor became larger, they became strong enough to overwhelm the rich and the civilization dissolved.
The United States’ chasm between rich and poor has increased in the past decades – increasing even more significantly during the recent pandemic. Additionally, the number of poor has been increased by the pandemic. Some leaders’ solution is to close the chasm through taxes on the rich. While this legal “robin hood” philosophy has an initial impact, the poor may not be satisfied by the share they receive and demand more. Further the chasm may actually increase because the investments (e.g. during the pandemic) grow faster due to compounding.
This pattern bodes ill for the United States’ society until we realize that every citizen could have access to the world’s greatest wealth generator (US stock market) through our Social Security system. A single update to our Social Security’s life insurance system would enable this access – permitting all citizens the opportunity to become wealthy.
Respectfully,