Strengthening Social Security--what do Americans want?

Strengthening Social Security--what do Americans want?

http://www.nasi.org/sites/default/files/research/What_Do_Americans_Want.pdf?

Americans value Social Security, want to improve benefits, and are willing to pay for the program.
■ Americans don’t mind paying for Social Security because they value it for themselves (80%), for their families (78%), and for the security and stability it provides to millions of retired Americans, disabled individuals, and children and widowed spouses of deceased workers (84%).

■ 84% believe current Social Security benefits do not provide enough income for retirees, and 75% believe we should consider raising future Social Security benefits in order to provide a more secure retirement for working Americans.

■ 82% agree it is critical to preserve Social Security for future generations even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by working Americans, and 87% want to preserve Social Security for future generations even if it means increasing taxes paid by wealthier Americans.

Americans support a package of changes that eliminates Social Security’s financing gap while improving benefits.

The trade-off analysis conducted for this study shows that, rather than maintain the status quo, 71% of Americans would prefer a package of changes that increases Social Security revenues, pays for benefit improvements, and eliminates more than 100% of the projected financing gap.

The preferred package would:

■ Gradually, over 10 years, eliminate the cap on earnings that are taxed for Social Security. This would mean that the 5% of workers who earn more than the cap ($110,100 in 2012; $113,700 in
2013) would pay into Social Security throughout the year, as other workers do.

■ Gradually, over 20 years, raise the Social Security tax rate that workers and employers each pay from 6.2% of earnings to 7.2%. A worker earning $50,000 a year would pay about 50 cents a week more each year.

■ Raise Social Security’s basic minimum benefit so that someone who paid into Social Security for 30 years can retire at 62 or later and not be poor.

■ Increase Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to more accurately reflect the level of inflation experienced by seniors.

This package would entirely eliminate Social Security’s projected financing gap and provide additional funding. The package is preferred over the status quo by large majorities of seniors in the so-called Silent Generation, born before 1946 (76%); Baby Boomers, born from 1946 to 1964 (71%); and younger Americans in Generation X, born from 1965 to 1979 (73%) and Generation Y, born in 1980 and after (67%). See Figure 1.