On yesterday’s Your World, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) provided his cure for Social Security. “I have been advocating for quite sometime now that we lift the cap that we currently have, Clyburn said.” But Cavuto kept interrupting to make the discussion about raising the retirement age instead.
Clyburn explained, “Social Security is capped out at $113,000. That simply means that if you make $113,000 a year, you pay Social Security (tax) on 100% of your income. …If you make $225,000 a year, you only pay (on) another 50% of your income. So I’ve been an advocate of …getting rid of the caps on income over $250,000."
Cavuto interrupted. “I guess it’s a a way to tax more, to get more money,” he sneered. Then he suggested that it’s the lower earners who should pay more: “Why not either start looking at raising the retirement age, grandfathered in over decades, but stuff like that that would be a quid to the, you know, taxing quo, you know what I mean?”
Clyburn replied, “Think about what you just said. You’re going to say that for you and I, we worked in air conditioned enviornments, we’re going to have the same retirement age as a coal miner out there.”
Cavuto interrupted again to deny that. Later, he said, “It used to be 30-1, workers paying into every beneficiary, we’re very close now to it being 2-1. By the next 20 years, it’s going to be almost a 1-1. That, as you know, Sir, cannot be sustained.”
Clyburn argued, “Remember that when we were paying 17, 20-1, the threshold was much …lower, I’m talking about the cap.”
Cavuto interrupted again “But you’re not resting it all on the cap right? …(On) just raising the cap, get a lot more money in from taxpayers and call it a day. You’re not.”
Clyburn said, “I’m for coming up with a system that will guarantee 75 year solvency.”
During this segment, Cavuto kidded around about how taxing his job is and that it should be classified in the same league as coal mining.
But it’s no joke about how people at the top income rung have bigger life expectancy gains, have less taxing jobs, easy access to healthy food, and good medical care. As Laura Clawson at Daily Kos wrote:
Some zombie lies cannot be smacked down hard enough or often enough. The claim that we should raise the Social Security retirement age because we’re all living longer and can therefore work longer is high on that list. This zombie is so hard to kill because the people who control policy will live longer and be able to continue working long past 65. If you’ve had good medical care for most of your life and you work at a desk in a climate-controlled office, it doesn’t sound so hard. But for people who do physical work, it’s another story. The reminder of what that means—physical pain, dangerous situations—has to come as relentlessly as the raise-the-retirement-age zombie.
Cavuto’s kidding may be fun but the serious hardships facing those who would struggle if the retirement age were raised will probably never receive even half the Fox News attention that the arguments against raising taxes and/or income caps will.
The fact is that they will wind up lifting the cap as Clyburn suggested, which will stop the discussions for another 20 years or so. They can also slightly adjust the payroll tax rate as just happened, and as was done back in the 1980s under Reagan.
The numbers of retirees will hit a peak fairly soon, as we get to the end of the baby boom retirees, and at that point the ratio numbers will start to open up again. That whole notion of 30:1 versus 1:1 is just another opening SS opponents regularly use to try to discredit the whole idea. Keep in mind that these are the people who never wanted it around in the first place.
I do think that the eligibility age could be slowly raised, but the issue of heavy physical labor and hazardous professions must be kept in mind or you get exactly the problem Clyburn was pointing out. The other notion that the right wing loves to spout is that of means-testing. They’re saying that they want to make sure that well-off people aren’t soaking the taxpayers. Except that I haven’t heard of too many multi-millionaires trying to collect a $2500 SS check. It’s more likely that a retiree on a decent pension will use SS to supplement, which is completely fair and appropriate, given that they’ve paid into the system by that point for at least 30-40 years, if not nearly 50 years. I had an accountant tell me that it may not be legal to run a means test where you tell someone who has paid into the system that they are ineligible to receive anything. My belief is that most wealthy people don’t collect SS for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they don’t need it. It’s also a pile of paperwork for very little return for them. But for someone living on a pension, that return is critical.
My prediction is that the cap will be lifted, an additional payroll tax adjustment will be made, and a long-term gradual age increase will be phased in, with proper exceptions for people who can show that the physical requirements (and tolls) of the work make them eligible earlier. The right wing will continue to rail against the program but since many of their constituents also collect it, they don’t have a real leg to stand on.
If there’s any justice in this world, you’ll be forced to stand in line for hours to get SS benefits, similar to Ms. Desilline Victor, the voter your fellow Fauxites mocked.
During this segment, Cavuto kidded around about how taxing his job is and that it should be classified in the same league as coal mining.
Hey, Craputo — there were 48 coal mining deaths in the US in 2010, the deadliest year for such fatalities in nearly 20 years:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/30/us-coal-mine-deaths-in-20_n_802790.html
You should tell the families of those miners how sitting on your fat arse in a TV studio spewing bullshit is in “the same league” as the work that took the lives of their loved ones. Only in the Fox News bubble . . .
.