Comments about ‘Social Security tougher to fix as time goes on’

Increase the cap to a higher number and the problem goes away. This isn't so hard. I like many people stop paying that tax midway through the year. This is a loop hole purely aimed at helping the wealthy, and is one of the major reasons for the underfunding.

But we all know that "fixing" it on the revenue side by closing down this limitation will never happen, and the only answer that will make conservatives happy is to reduce the benefit.

Yes, we need to address all the other issues such as better enforcement and fraud detection, but the problem really isn't that hard to fix.

Our elected politicians and federal bureaucrats in the past have tampered with the Social Security equivalent of the 401(k) and 457 funds for our retirement as they knew it would be in future generations and the politicians would not be around to account for their pillaging. They robbed Peter to pay Paul and Peter is now ready to collect. The Congress for those 40 years when they were in control of people's lives and destinies with their overpowering power and control is gone. The Senators and President of today try to spin that it just a Republican problem from a couple of years. The blame is spread to both parties and spinning or twisting the facts may happen but the facts back up the fact that many of the politicans today weren't born when politicans of the past had already tipped their hand into the till.

Our children will and are paying for the excesses of the past and they will pay for their parent's problems of not having a retirement as their empty nesting will be arriving with the parents and grandparents due to instant gratification of today. We are paying for people not due.

The government keeps warning us against privatizing the system; yet the Galveston Texas area did so a generation ago and now their participants have a very nice retirement as a result. One might ask if the government is so against privatization because they are not done 'borrowing' from the system.

Ronald Reagan has been quoted as saying something like: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are - I'm from the government and I'm here to help. It is unfortunate but perhaps for the first time in our recollections, we are struggling to teach our children that a police officer is their friend and that the government is on our side. More and more evidence suggests that government exists to protect and perpetuate itself and citizens exist to ensure that this happens -- even if it means allowing citizens to work longer to help fund their retirement.

UtahBlueDevil,

Careful with that suggestion, you have now crossed into the class warfare area by suggesting the wealthy pay a bit more rather than get bigger tax breaks.

When Social Security (SS) was first introduced the average life span was 64.5 years and you got to retire at age 65 or 6 months after you were dead on average.

Sudden changes in any system creates shock waves so no matter what we do we must transition into it with deliberation.

Let's link the retirement age for SS to life expectancy. For example we could make the SS retirement age 4 years less than life expectancy. Then we adjust the SS retirement age by a maximum of 6 months each year. If life expectancy today is 79 years then the retirement age would be 75. It would take 16 years to reach the target retirement age. This would not hurt anyone and it gives people time to make adjustments.

The current situation is not sustainable. Changes must be made.