Social Security changes today ensure future

Over the past 80 years, Social Security has become a major piece of the U.S. economic landscape and an important part of retirement plans.

In 1960, there were more than five workers for every person receiving Social Security.

The website includes a timeline that begins with the signing of the act and ends with this year’s announcement of Vision 2025, our bold vision that will guide the agency as we work to meet future customer service needs. Taxes will be increased, the minimum age at which someone can receive benefits will increase, or the growth rate in benefits will be reduced or some combination of these will have to be implemented. Her first Social Security check was for $22.54 and she lived to be 100. Self-employed workers pay 12.4 percent of their income into the system. But with Baby Boomers retiring in large numbers, the surpluses are on track to shrink and eventually disappear. “We can’t take Social Security for granted – especially with 80 percent of Americans planning to rely on the program”.

However, after age 70 there is no additional boost in payments if people wait to claim Social Security. And I am most grateful to Social Security for bringing financial security and peace of mind to my own family, my friends and neighbors, and my constituents.

Commentary by Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and co-author of Get What’s Yours – the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security Benefits. Instead, the federal government should start by making tweaks to the system, including raising or lifting the cap on wages above the $118,500 mark.

Congress could redirect tax revenue from the retirement fund to the disability fund, as it has done in the past.

A new survey commissioned by AARP to commemorate Social Security’s 80th anniversary (on August 14) took the pulse of public opinion. AARP’s Humans of Social Security is a great way to hear from people who talk about what the program means to them. Here are some of the important features of the Social Security program.

You’d never know it to listen to the politicians, but Social Security is very popular with the rest of Americans-not just as a benefit, but as a program for the common good. This measure, called the CPI for the Elderly, would increase the annual COLA by about 0.2 percentage point, on average.

The wage base is not an arbitrary number: In 1983, the last time that Congress significantly reformed Social Security, it was pegged at an amount that would tax about 90 percent of all wage income in the United States. Younger adults, particularly those in the 30-49 age bracket, expressed less confidence in the future of Social Security than older adults, yet they still valued the program.

Even if Congress doesn’t reform the system at all, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits through 2034, and then three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2089. Politicians listen to them, so there will not be a sudden 20 percent drop in Social Security benefits in 2034. It’s still healthy though past the retirement ages of the almost 60 million older Americans who collect those pension checks.