Social Security
The largest single federal program of any kind is Social Security. This program is generally thought of as providing benefits for retired workers. Social Security not only provides benefits for retired workers, but for the survivors of workers who die before retirement. The program also offers disability compensation for a worker that becomes unable to warn a living. He or she and any dependants are eligible for these benefits. These social security recipients are also eligible for Medicare, which is a type of insurance coverage. The major purpose of social security is to distribute income across time. In other words workers and employers pay into the fund while employed and receive the benefits when they retire or become disabled. Even though social security is generally a widely accepted program by the public, several problems are associated with this program. "Social security, the nation's largest, costliest, and most successful domestic program, has reached a critical point in its development. As its creators anticipated, nearly every wage earner now pays taxes into the system. In principle, all citizens may be eligible for entitlements at some point in their lives. Yet, sen
3) Means-Testing. Some advocacy groups support reforms that would reduce or eliminate Social Security benefits for retirees who have other sources of significant income. The main rationale is that since higher-income retirees do not depend on Social Security to live comfortably, it is wasteful for the In evaluating the merits of those recommendations, it is important to understand that framework and principles: 2) Partial Privatization. This proposal moves in the same direction as the substantial privatization plan but less wholeheartedly. Rather than provide only a low guaranteed payment, it would reduce current benefit levels significantly for most workers whole maintaining some connection between what workers earned and what retirees receive. This proposal preserves some degree of universality, protection against poverty, protection against inflation, and generational sharing. Both privatization proposals would incur sharply higher administrative cost than the current system, which would reduce the amount available to pay benefits. and it does have a redistribute component. The system would be phased in so that current beneficiaries and Americans fifty-five or older would remain in the current program. Workers between thirty-five years of age would be covered by reduced benefits under the traditional system plus personal security accounts, whole those under age thirty would be covered only under the proposed scheme. Making the transition to such a system would actually add 1.52 percentage points to the projected shortfall over the next seventy-five years. May fear Social Security system is unattainable given the increase in the number of retirees. Some argue that if nothing is done to change the program, sometime in the next century, it may become impossible to maintain the current level of benefits. This concern rest on one fact: The aging of the baby-
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Approximate Word count = 3180
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)
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