Crane's Social Security System

Social Security has been a very beneficial government program for elderly people, and those whom they support, when being an active member in the workforce is no longer an option for reasons such as old age, disability, or death. Destruction of the program, or worse, lack of the aid, would be catastrophic. Without it, it could leave many senior citizens that can no longer

o     Social Security has made a difference in the lives of African Americans o     Without Social Security, the poverty rate for elderly African American beneficiaries would increase from 21 percent to 60 percent. o     Social Security is the only source of retirement income for 37 percent of elderly African Americans. o     African Americans face different situations when it comes to retirement.o     Social Security is race neutral – individuals who are in identical life situations are treated the same. People, however, are rarely in identical situations. African Americans tend to have lower earnings than whites and less pension coverage. Therefore, Social Security benefits are disproportionately important to them.o     African Americans have lower life expectancies than whites. The average African American male currently aged 65 can expect to live to about age 79,

In the United States of America, there exists a two-party system comprised of the U.S. Democratic Party and the U.S. Republican Party. Although these two parties have become somewhat neutral on many issues of national policy, each party has a unique perspective of how the ever-looming Social Security problem should be alleviated. First, the U.S. Democratic Party believes that in order to fix the Social Security problem, pension plans must be reformed and savings incentives must be expanded nationwide. Also, the U.S. Democratic Party has persistently argued against the recent idea of privatizing Social Security. On the other hand, the U.S. Republican Party believes the Social Security system is in need of much more drastic change. According to statistics provided by the official website of the Republican National Committee, "Under the current system, today's 30-year-old worker will face a 26% benefit cut when he or she reaches normal retirement age." Also according to the RNC website, "By 2041, when workers in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt - unless we act now to save it." In order to fix this troubled system, the U.S. Republican Party believes that the only answer is privatization.

In “The Social Security Problem”, Max Moore discusses the fearful reality of Social Security running out of funds. He states that the U.S. Department of the Treasury predicts that Social Security funds will run out by 2041 and action must be taken in order to prevent this (134). In his essay, he explains how the depletion of Social Security funds are a result from a decreasing retirement age, decreasing fertility rate, and shrinking work force. These things contribute to an increased population relying on Social Security, an increased population of the elderly, and a decreased ratio of workers paying for those beneficiaries (135). Moore explains the proposal of George W. Bush to make Social Security partially privatized; allowing young workers to invest their retirement savings into their own account. This would result in people putting their retirement on the line in

I believe the United States has an economic dilemma when it comes to social security and Medicare. As our textbook states, social security is drastically underfunded. It also says that Medicare is underfunded as well. I have listened to people who talk about how there will not be enough money in social security after the millennial generation. If this is true, then my generation and other generations after me will be in a terrible situation when they can retire. Medicare, a government, insured health insurance program, is also a matter of concern. Since the Medicare fund is underfunded at a high level, people who would need the help of their Medicare plan could potentially backfire. If the funding for Medicare does not reach a level where you would not have to worry about the quality of the care, then potential health risks could become much worse without adequate resources used to treat and prevent them.

It’s a matter of either losing all that you have worked for and live in poverty when retired or allowing your hard earned dollars to grow and have a secure comfortable retirement. I believe that Social Security is a doomed Government Program and that Privatization of Social Security would allow for a more secure retirement plan for all Americans. Social Security was first created to help aging Americans in their senior years so they would not end up in poverty. Social Security was signed in as law on August 14, 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was fully operating by 1940 (SSA). Originally a retirement program, but Social Security now includes survivor benefits, disability benefits and Medicare and all together is the largest

The reasons why the 1981 attempt at reforming Social Security under the Reagan administration failed, as detailed in Chapter 8 of Martha Derthick and Steven M Teles’ The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and its Legacies, boils down to the following factors: it did not have a clear goal in mind about Social Security reform (Derthick, Teles 187), it had a poor working relationship with Congress on the issue (Derthick, Teles 185), and leadership, on part of the president, was lacking (Derthick, Teles 192). In contrast, the attempt at reforming welfare in the 90s, as chronicled in Chapter 4 of Gary Bryner’s The Great American Welfare Reform Debate Politics and Public Morality, was successful because the Clinton administration worked

Those who think that privatizing social security will benefit the citizens who receive it are very wrong. The reason that they think that it will affect social security is because by creating private accounts, it will cause the separate interest rates for the individual person to go up or down depending on the person. This of course is unnecessary because the way it is set up right now, the individuals are receiving benefits that work for the certain situation that the person is in. Many retired citizens are not in financial crisis because of this setup, because there is nothing that is wrong with it. In the last couple of decades social security has completely transformed the way that elderly citizens in our country live their lives. According to Mortimer Zuckerman “roughly two thirds of people over 65 and older depend on social security for at least half their income, and roughly 20 percent rely on it for all their income.” These are pretty promising numbers regarding the way that the American seniors are spending their

It’s a matter of either losing all that you have worked for and live in poverty when retired or allowing your hard earned dollars to grow and have a secure comfortable retirement. I believe that Social Security is a doomed Government Program and that Privatization of Social Security would allow for a more secure retirement plan for all Americans. Social Security was first created to help aging Americans in their senior years so they would not end up in poverty. Social Security was signed in as law on August 14, 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was fully operating by 1940. Originally a retirement program, but Social Security now includes survivor benefits, disability benefits and Medicare and all together is the largest

I believe our current social security system should be replaced by a mandatory private pension system. If it is not gracefully transitioned from the way it currently is then it will unfortunately disappear altogether in an abrupt fashion. A replacement will alleviate this issue and replace it with a viable option that can sustain itself.

By looking at the ratio of young to elder citizens at that time, idea of providing benefits to retirees from young employees’ taxes was logical. Only thing that Roosevelt was unaware of was the period of “baby boom” that was going to create trouble in the future with providing benefits. With the retirement of “baby boomers” in around 2018, real crisis will start for Social Security Administration with providing higher amount of benefits from lower amount of incomes.

Debates over Social Security have been ongoing since its inception in 1935 until today. The trend seems to be toward an increasing percentage of the American public, across party and demographic lines, in favor of strengthening Social Security funding, and a willingness to pay more to preserve and even improve benefits. However, what is not clear is whether Americans favor privatization of Social Security because of fears that the Social Security Trust Fund is living on borrowed time.

     Privatization is the most controversial argument in this sector of government. Many citizens believe that they should be allowed to make investments on their own rather than having the government perform this for them. These people believe that by doing so they have more control over their future and more autonomy from the government. Furthermore, they stress that privatization will increase competition, which is the basis of our free market capitalistic society. Many other communities in accord, feel that by investing privately what they are now paying in Social Security would raise economic growth and increase retirement incomes. For the past several decades, the average yield on private stock has excited inflation by seven percent compared to treasury bonds that only exceeds inflation by 2.3 percent. Alternatively, all plans to privatize social security come with an adverse effect. Most noticeably, is the tax increases which are necessary to make

Social security has become the largest governmental program in the United States, accounting for 24% of total US federal spending by 2015(Word cited). A proposal to replace the current social security of the government is the mandatory privatization in pension system, which will allow employees to manage their retirement funds through individual investment accounts. But due to the fact that privatized pension system will only be more detrimental including higher national debt, lower assured benefits than the current system, and the requirement of a new bureaucratic government.

Since its creation in 1935 the Republican Party has been trying to change it. In 1935 the Republican party opposed its creation, in 1964 the Republican party tried to make it 'voluntary', and now there is a new debate on Social Security and 'privatizing' it or parts of it.