Parking a link: a new (to me) report on Social Security polling

Last updated on: August 16, 2016 at 9:51 am by Jane the Actuary

Parking a link: a new (to me) report on Social Security polling 2016-08-16T09:51:06-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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From a new tweet, but an old (2013) report, reporting the results of polling on how Americans would fix Social Security. The basic conclusion, from the press release, is that Americans prefer increases in taxes (especially for the wealthy via an end to the earnings cap) to benefit cuts, and would actually endorse benefit increases such as a more generous COLA and a minimum benefit set at poverty level. Funny, how those are exactly the policy preferences of the organization that sponsored the survey.

I did a quick skim, and, indeed, the NASI, National Academy of Social Insurance, (www.nasi.org), which supports ever-more generous social insurance benefits, managed to find that Americans support its agenda. Big surprise. So there’s not much new here. And a lot of its statements are sound bite-y, like asking about the earnings limit without any concrete explanation of whether benefits would increase proportionately or whether maximum benefits would remain as-is, and taxes in excess of what provides benefit accrual would be just that, a tax. (For that matter, most Americans think that Social Security provides a fairly level accrual, rather than understanding that you accrue much less benefit the higher your income grows, so how they interpreted this poll option is unclear).

The only interesting piece on here is a proposal that the minimum benefit be set at the poverty level. Given that the federal government defines poverty levels based on the number of people in the family, but only counts a married couple as a “family,” not a cohabitating couple, this is another blow for marriage, if they propose a system in which there is a significant benefit increase solely for being unmarried. What’s more, they propose (in the report, page 20) that the poverty-minimum be given to anyone who retires at age 62 or older, with at least 30 years of work history (and currently, “work history” is defined fairly minimally) — which I take to be an intentional rejection of the move to later retirement ages.

Of course, our system doesn’t now ask the elderly to live in “poverty” when defined as “material deprivation” — it’s just that the determination of whether someone is “living in poverty” is based on treating Social Security as a form of earned income, but SSI, food stamps, Medicaid, and other benefits for seniors aren’t counted when determining whether someone is “living in poverty” or not. So for the most part, assuming that all these cash and in-kind benefits add up to at least poverty-level, this benefit would be a shifting of money from other forms of welfare spending to Social Security, with the benefit hike itself going to people who themselves qualify for only low Social Security benefits based on their earnings record, but do not otherwise qualify as “poor.”

On the other hand, I’ve written in the past on the fact that I rather favor a simplified Social Security system, similar to The Netherlands (not specifically discussed in the link above, sorry), where everyone gets the same amount (and married individuals are not disadvantaged in their benefit amount relative to cohabitating couples, or roommates), and employer pensions supplement this for pay above this benefit level, or perhaps Australia, with its combo of a phased-out flat benefit and mandatory retirement savings. Easy to understand, and you can’t play political games.

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