Sunday, March 24, 2024

Let it go broke

Reason: "A GOP Plan To Raise the Retirement Age Reveals How Unserious Washington Is About Social Security."
It's important to keep in mind that if you're someone interested in maintaining Social Security as a functioning program, the real threat isn't from proposed changes but from doing nothing. The trustees that oversee Social Security estimate that benefits will be cut by 23 percent starting in 2033, with further cuts needed in future years, unless policymakers make changes to the program's fundamental math.

"Virtually every serious person who works on Social Security policy knows the eligibility age must eventually rise higher," Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and expert on the broken math that is pushing America's entitlement programs into a death spiral, told Reason. "That said, partisan reform blueprints only attract partisan demagoguery and poison the well for reform."
Raising the retirement age for far-off retirees is one of the most anodyne reforms even though it won't stave off the immediate budgetary problems.  But even that is a bridge too far for both political parties.  Better off to let the automatic benefit cuts kick in and embrace the chaos.

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