Repeat after me - benefit. Ben-e-fit. Benefit. Social Security is a BENEFIT.

[customerserviceguy]

144. Your analysis is correct

but only if Gen Y'ers can get decent jobs to pay enough into Social Security. I'm afraid that a far larger proportion of them will be stuck in jobs that barely allow them to survive than of any generation before them in the previous 100 years. With the demise of union jobs, and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, all we've got left is service jobs for growth in the job market. Most of them don't pay terribly well.

It may take a small increase in the FICA tax rate to part of what helps save the system. The boomers were called on to do that several times. In 1968 (when the leading edge of the boomer generation turned 22) the total combined rate of payroll taxes was 4.4%, by 1990, it had risen to it's present 7.65%. I picked that time period to match the number of years that have passed since there was a rate increase.

I also think it would be a good idea to stagger the ages for full Social Security benefits based on job difficulty, which can be ascertained from worker's comp records. 67 is too old for someone doing backbreaking labor, but 70 is not too old for a pencil-pusher like me who is able to sit at a desk all day. As we move into a service economy that involves less bodily stress, the average age for full retirement benefits would rise. If we divided the known jobs into quintiles, we could give full benefits to the hardest jobs at 65, with the age for full benefits for the least body-stressing jobs at 70. I feel this is more fair than just leaving it at 67 for everybody.