Social Security needs to be tweaked. It is paid for with part of the FICA payroll tax that is capped at $106,800 which makes Social Security a regressive tax that give the affluent a big break. Republican presidents like GW Bush have been reluctant to raise the cap which has weakened the program.
The other problem is that there are fewer workers to pay into the system for the seniors who retire. Wikipedia states:
The age distribution of the United States population has affected this viability. The consequence is the change in the ratio of workers to social security beneficiaries. The ratio has declined from 16.5 in 1950 to about 3 today and is expected to decline to 2 by 2030.
The Wikipedia article also points out that the system would work fine if the federal government had not been using the Social Security over payments as general revenue. According to Wikipedia:
If the system was funded solely by the revenues collected from the social security tax and if those revenues could be used for no other purpose than to provide benefits to the social security recipients, then the worries about the system's viability would be much smaller.
When Al Gore ran against GW Bush, he talked about the Social Security "lock box." Gore was talking about the excess of Social Security payments that were used to fund other government programs.
Undoubtedly, the Republicans will try to push some privatization schemes for Social Security, Such schemes will simply weaken the program because management fees would be taken out of the Social Security accounts. This is exactly what happened in the UK when Margaret Thacher privatized the UK social security system. Most of the pensioners lost half of their social security savings.
Congress passed the 401k and Roth IRA law as saving' programs but did a poor job of regulating these programs. When people started losing their jobs when the Great Recession of 2008 started, many workers found that one third of their IRA account funds had been taken as "management fees."
The Democrats will not offend the business community by saying that government programs like Medicare and Social Security have lower overhead and are more efficient than similar porgrams in private enterprise.
The government does not pay ridiculous salaries to senior people nor does it award obscene bonuses that are common in private enterprise. Rightardia came across a little gem that stated that 25 of the largest US corporations paid more to their CEOs than they paid in corporate income tax.
Federal workers are also better trained an educated than their private sector counterparts. Factcheck,org noted that federal workers have about the three times the education of private employees. Many federal employees belong to unions and unions insist that workers are properly trained,
Training is an area often neglected in private enterprise which is notorious for "crises management." Crises management occurs when a problem becomes so severe that draconian measures are needed to fix the problem. This usually occurs after a corporation is sued.
Many corporations also have the 50/50 rule. Once you reach age 50 or make $50,000 a year, you are a target for a layoff.
Keep in mind, too, that a corporation can go into bankruptcy and liquidate its debts. The federal government cannot do this.
Do you really wish to trust your Golden Years with fast talking account executives from a private corporation? Apparently some naive and under-educated Tea party types would!
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