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Comment by dueltmp_yufsy | Hacker News Reader

Seems the US will have to do this soon. Just very very unpopular. Not sure which party will actually pull the trigger.

My guess - they'll just gut the benefits to anemic levels for everyone slowly rather than some big easy to point to maneuver like this.

What is the political incentive to do this ever?

My thinking was, cutting taxes via budget reconciliation (which is the only process the currently paralyzed legislature can do) requires some hand waving deference to the notion of being revenue neutral by the Byrd rule, so cuts to social programs or rollbacks of government spending have been increasingly included as a way to get tax cuts. Tax cuts fund your donors who fund your reelection campaign.

But, I just looked it up again for this comment and that same rule says "No changes to social security" in reconciliation. It is specifically called out as forbidden to touch via reconciliation unlike almost every other program. So, maybe you are right, it will just be ignored because it doesn't seem possible to quietly change.

The income part of SS is more or less subsistence level, which arguably was its intention to keep the elderly from begging in the streets. But in the dystopian US healthcare system, Medicare is arguably the more important part of the social net. Without it, you are not going to afford any healthcare in old age.

If this budget hits the PAYGO limits, which is basically guaranteed, that will trigger automatic cuts to Medicare, so they can backdoor cut the program without anybody voting for that.

Where is the political incentive not to do this ever? If you reduce spending on social safety nets, you can reduce taxes on the wealthy, and as a bonus the poor die. win/win.

You can reduce taxes on the wealthy without reducing spending, which is what the Republicans just did, kicking the can down the road to a future administration while getting the political benefit of the current spending.

Whoever does that will get voted out.

Voters over 62 make up >25% of the midterm vote.

By 2030 - that number could easily be >30%.

Not sure about the US, but from what I have seen in Europe the questionnaires show that older people are actually for these policies more so than young people, especially when they are already retired and thus not affected. In Germany, two thirds of retirees answered for abandoning a public holiday while everyone else was by majority obviously against it.

Trump is priming to con the Republicans into touching the third rail, and they'll all lose their seats. They're already warming up by chopping Medicaid. It's stupid, unnecessary, and cruel.

that's easily "solved" by setting the cutoff date to benefit the older generation. I believe that kind of ladder kicking is exactly what's happening in the article on Denmark, and how several other European countries squared that circle.

From my uninformed perspective this seem like a rather big and sensible lever toward rebalancing US national finances. The actuarial math must have changed significantly since the inception of the program, no?

Not significantly compared to other changes. SS taxes are at a much higher rate than when the program started. The workforce is also vastly more productive enabling a much higher standard of living.

What ended up happening is we rebalanced the program based on a lot of positive changes and used a huge ‘surplus’ to subsidize government borrowing, and nobody wants to adjust for any negatives ever.

There's absolutely no reason to other than to line the pockets of the wealthy.

The US may have to raise the retirement age eventually but it could put off needing to do so for a long time by making the payroll tax flat instead of regressive. Currently here is the percent various workers pay:

  Income     Tax
    $10k     6.2%
    $50k     6.2%
    $100k    6.2%
    $150k    6.2%
    $200k    5.4%
    $300k    3.6%
    $700k    1.6%
   $1000k    1.1%
   $5000k    0.22%
  $10000k    0.11%

This comes about because it is structured as a two bracket tax rate:

         Bracket     Marginal Rate
       $0 - $176100    6.2%
  $176101 - ∞          0%

Just make it 6.2% across the board and it will push off the need for further major reforms far enough to largely get past the peak in Boomer retirements which are happening now. Maybe gradually raise the rate from 6.2% (which has not changed since 1990) to 7.2% to be safe.

Once Boomers pass through the system and start dying off in significant numbers over the next 10-30 years there won't be any size differences between successive generations nearly as large. Gen X is smaller than Millennials, then Gen Z is between Gen X and Millennials in size, and the current generation is projected to be around the same size is Gen Z. This should make it considerably easier to keep the system working.

Polls show [1][2] that this approach (flat rate + 1% gradual rate increase) is the solution voters prefer by a large majority regardless of party affiliation when presented with all the solutions that have been proposed by politicians and experts.

Generally whenever Democrats in Congress introduce bills to address the problem this is the approach they go for, although sometimes they talk about keeping a lower marginal rate for people making between $176100 and $400000, like this:

         Bracket     Marginal Rate
       $0 - $176100    6.2%
  $176101 - $400000     0%
  $400001 - ∞          6.2%

Republicans in Congress do not really have a coherent approach to this. There's a powerful group in the House called the Republican Study Committee, which is a large conservative caucus of around 190 members (~85% of House Republicans). They are the ones setting Republican policy in Congress on this issue.

According to them there are only three ways to fix Social Security: some combination of (1) raise the money it takes in, (2) reduce the amount it pays out, and (3) make up for any shortfall by paying some benefits out of the general budget.

They also say that #1 and #3 are off the table. Their proposals generally go for #2 via raising the retirement age. That does buy some time but not much, and runs into the problem that the Republican Party Platform says (caps in original) "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE", and Trump also keeps saying that which doesn't leave them any options.

[1] https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/

[2] https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/NASI_SocialS...

Why not just subsume it into the other income taxes?

Because politics. Americans like to delude themselves that their taxes are low by splitting them up into various buckets (Social security, Medicare, Federal Income tax, State income tax, even city income tax some places, property tax, sales tax, and now tariffs). Like selling a computer then charging for the keyboard and the power supply separately. Makes people feel like they're paying less.

The numbers only work if you assume the program exists in a total vacuum. You can expect Congress will borrow any social security surplus as they start running short in other places, like Medicare.

"Not retiring" in the US will be more dictated by inability to purchase a home than Social Security.

Look at all these people around you in their forties who are still renting. They are basically too late to buy. They will be "forever renters". This means they will have to work until death, as their rents continue to rise when their peers who owned homes took their downsizing premium and lived off of it for a few years.

What's crazy is the number of grown adults who think their 401ks will magically grow to fill the gap.

I hear this sentiment frequently but it doesn't pencil out. Renting an equivalent unit will typically, month-to-month, be cheaper than buying. Of course a significant portion of the monthly mortgage payment goes to principal which increases your net worth, but there are many cases where the money you save monthly by renting will actually exceed the principal you accumulate from your mortgage payment. In fact, there are plenty of helpful calculators to help you figure out what makes the most sense if you don't have a love affair with Excel [1].

You may argue that the the value of the house will appreciate well in a good market, but there is nothing stopping you from taking the money you saved by renting and putting it in an appreciating asset.

[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculator/rent-vs-buy-calculator

The only real financial benefit to home ownership is it enforces savings.

Where do I input the yearly growth of the property's value? Property prices where I live in Sydney have grown ~7% on average over the last ten years. That's higher than the average loan interest rate over the last ten years of ~4.5%. It's possible to find some other investment that earns more than ~7% profit, but in order to really be more profitable it would also need to cover the amount you spent in rent over that period.

the rent vs buy calculator does not tell me what to do when I am in my 60s and cannot find work

a homeowner in that scenario can sell their home; a renter is in trouble

You can still find plenty of reasonable housing in the US. As for young people on the coasts, yea I don't know how they will own a house within the next 10 years.

Housing in the US isn't anywhere near as cost prohibitive as a vocal minority of people like to make it sound like it is.

You just have to give up on the Santa Monicas, San Franciscos, and Manhattans of the nation. There's plenty of affordable housing outside the top tier cities, and modern tech has made it easier than ever to work from practically anywhere on the planet.

The only people in their 40s I know of who are still renting that I would consider "forever renters" are being extraordinarily undisciplined with their finances and spend what they could be saving towards a down payment on credit card debt they self-inflicted.

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