In the 1930’s, The Great Depression highlighted the need for a system to provide assistance for the poor and elderly. In 1932, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a social insurance program allowing workers to place funds from paychecks into an account that would be available upon retirement. In 1935, this became law, being recognized as the Social Security Act (Grabianowski, 2005). This version of the Social Security Act created retirement benefits at the age of 65 for the retired worker only. In 1939, Congress amended the program to allow spouses and dependent children of retired or deceased workers to receive the entitlements. Changes in population and economic situations created later changes in the Social Security system. …show more content…
The bulk of government benefits, notably Social Security, are paid to retirees. These programs are financed through payroll deductions from citizens still working. When American workers pay into Social Security, the money is not invested in an account where it can be withdrawn after retirement. The younger workers are paying for retirees. The program is a pyramid scheme that works as long as it is bottom heavy. Potential problems could exist with privatization of Social Security. Barry Bosworth and Gary Burtless stated in their article, Privatizing Social Security: The Troubling Trade Offs that shifting the retirement system away from a pay-as-you-go financing to an advanced funding, privatization can boost national savings. Such a shift will require a sacrifice through cuts in benefits or an increase in combined contributions to Social Security as well as a new retirement plan. Privatization plans that do not require a consumption sacrifice, will not achieve a higher saving …show more content…
Neither solution would be popular, in that raising taxes would not be a wise political choice; decreasing benefits would affect millions of retirees and those approaching retirement age. Despite the unpopularity of increasing Social Security taxes, this has potential to be a viable solution. “Workers currently pay 6.2 percent of their earnings into the Social Security system up to $113,700 in 2013. If that tax rate was gradually increased to 7.2 percent by 2036 it would eliminate just over half (53 percent) of Social Security’s deficit. If workers and employers each paid 7.6 percent, it would eliminate the financing gap (Klein,