Christie backs means testing of Social Security, raising retirement age

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Percentage of 2012 GOP Primary Voters Over Age 50 in Early States
Source: NBC

New Hampshire: 56%

South Carolina: 61%

Florida: 71%

Great way to start, Chris.

Perfect demographics for such a plan seeing as no one over 56/57 is even affected in any way. He will pitch it just fine.

Wonderful news - this is being shared like crazy on Facebook. It's been awhile since I've seen all the Christie superfans (and trust me there's PLENTY of them on my friend list) get quite this excited.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

To save social security, we need a combination of a payroll tax cap increase and  a retirement age increase. That's the (sad) truth of the matter, and there's nothing hard-right about it. The means testing thing is unnecessary, but it's not something I have a problem with and it does not constitute privatizing the system.

Sanders (along with most of the rest of the democratic party) needs to stop spewing this "hope for the best" rhetoric and realize that SS will eventually become insolvent if we don't raise the retirement age (unless we just want to keep raising taxes to no end, which doesn't sound like a good solution). It's not a nice thing to do, sure, but it's a fiscal necessity.

 

The payroll tax needs to be replaced with a tax on speculation, after which the retirement age can be slightly reduced.

tax on stock investment? Don't we already have that with the capital gains tax? And reducing the retirement age will only make things worse.

No. A financial transaction tax (which existed from 1914-1965) is different from capital gains. Capital gains is when the revenue of an asset is greater it's purchase price. I'm talking about a tax on Wall Street speculation, the proceeds going to the Social Security Trust Fund.

So you're telling me LBJ was a good President!?

We actually do still have one - it's just slightly over 10 percent of the previous rate (it gets updated frequently so perhaps just under now?)