Social Security’s funding shortfall has started a serious debate among young workers and their elders, with younger workers frustrated that older Americans are asking them to pay higher taxes to protect the benefits they’ve been counting on.
A new poll highlights the divide — 89% of Americans over 65 support preserving current retirees’ benefits, even if it means raising taxes. Among adults ages 30 to 44, support falls to 57%.
“There’s a new poll about Social Security,” BlazeTV host Ron Simmons explains on “Relatable.” “U.S. Boomers, which I’m included, support tax hikes on young workers to keep current Social Security checks.”
“I can imagine that’s controversial because I know that when I was your age, if you’re younger listening to this, I would have been against increasing my taxes to take care of people that had already paid in,” he continues.
“But, you know, now that I’m a Boomer, let me tell you the way I look at it,” he adds.
“When I first started, you could get full benefits at age 65. Then they came along and changed it,” Simmons says.
“They increased the retirement age. And increasing the retirement age means that people my age and younger would pay more in for a longer period of time before we were able to get benefits,” he explains.
Simmons, who qualifies to get full benefits in the next couple of years, has paid up to $360,000 in Social Security.
“If that would have been invested at 5% interest, that would have been a value of about $900,000. So, my account, if it was like in a 401(k), would probably be sitting there with about $900,000 in it,” he explains.
“If I went out and bought an annuity, meaning an annuity is something that pays me every month until the day I die, then that annuity would be about $5,000 a month. Now, that’s less than what I’m going to get from Social Security based on the estimates that I’ve found on the website,” he continues.
“The problem is, that money wasn’t invested like it should be. What happens is, we all put money in Social Security, and then the government takes that money and does other things with it, and they leave an IOU that essentially is not earning us any interest,” he adds.
What Simmons believes should be done is give people the ability to “direct the investment of the amount that you put in there.”
“If it was invested in a balanced portfolio, a mixture of stocks and bonds, that’s going to grow at 8 or 9% a year,” he explains.
“And over your career, that’s going to create a huge account that, again, you could draw on, or they could even just buy you an annuity and pay you a certain amount every month,” he continues.
“That’s the issue,” he adds.
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