WildmindZ: Solving Economic Problems in our Sleep!

Whew! I'll miss that one. Hardly ever is it a good thing to be considered old, but today's report favors us aging baby boomers. If you want to collect your Social Security check Uncle Sam has promised you, you were given a 1-year repreive, but you better do it sooner than later.

Today, the Trustees of the Social Security Administration released their annual report about the condition of the "so-called" Trust Fund and Medicare. The report said that the Social Security fund will begin to pay out more money than it takes in by the year 2017. That's 10 years folks. And, it will become completely broke by the year 2041. This is one year later than the group predicted in last year's report.

The Medicare fund will be completely broke by the year 2019. That's 12 years from now. That was also 1 year later than the group predicted in last year's report.

I plan to not help the situation by getting sick before Medicare goes broke, recovering around 2018, then drawing my social security benefits when I turn 70, 3 years after I'm eligible. That means the government will be paying me even more money every month as I live to 125!

Seriously, these are major problems that aren't going away. So, how can EconomindZers help. By solving the issues. Give us your WILD solutions!

Social Security is currently funded by 6.2% of your salary being taken as taxes. Your employer adds another 6.2% on top of that to get the 12.4%.

So, let's look at some of the solutions:
1) Extend the benefits-receiving age. Currently it's 67 for those born after 1960. Raise that by just a little bit every year, a sort-of indexing, if you will. Life expectancies are longer now than they were when SS was established. It's only common sense that this should be reflective of society. This is a solution that's already been implemented. For example, if you were born in 1937 or earlier, you can collect benefits at age 65.
2) Raise the 12.4% tax. Not likely as everyone hates higher taxes. Plus, this would be primarly borne by lower-income wage earners.
3) Raise the maximum wage amount. Probably the best solution. Currently, 12.4% of your wages are taxed up to $90,000. This means that all of low-wage earner's wages are taxed at the 12.4% rate, while the so-called "wealthy Americans" don't have to pay anything on wages above the $90K threshold. This would be the most politically-supportive solution (especially for the Democrats who fervently believe wealthy Americans don't pay any taxes, or at least their fair share). If my calculator serves me correctly, the maximum wage amount would have to rise to around $92,000. I got that be saying that $90k of wages delivers $11,160 of taxes at 12.4%. If the taxes needed were 1.89% higher {see next paragraph} to solve the problem, that would require $11,371 of taxes from every average American. Dividing the $11,371 by 12.4%, gives a higer wage amount of $91,701 taxed at 12.4% to solve the issue.

Outside of other solutions, this is the one I'd support of those listed here, as the Trustees project that it would only take an extra increase of 1.89%, to a full level of 14.29% for the Social Security fund to be fully in the black, given that 78 million aging Baby Boomers are soon on their way to receiving benefits. I believe this is one solution that if explained to the American public, they'd support fully as a fix to the SS problem.

4) Tax income above $90K. A variant of the last solution. This wouldn't have to be at the full 12.4% rate. It could be for say, 2-3% of all wages between $90K and $150K, for example.
5) Cut benefits. Not gonna happen as it'll hurt 2 of the 3 most sacred issues in American politics (women, children and farmers).

So, here are some possible solutions to this mega-problem.

Give us your own....before it's too late!