James Galbraith's Radical Plan to Create Jobs: LOWER the Retirement Age

Every body who work: goverment, no goverment, private, independent and so...diff kinds of workers should pay social security "taxes" for the SSRetirement Fund, as a basic retirement income for everybody in the States.

Very easy to see in the comments who is employed and who has been marginalized by our society. We nee to start supporting social security by fairly taxing the entire employment of all Americans and created an efficient government (no that's not an oxymoron) system of national Health. those who have been excessed by employers after 20 or more years should be able to step aside for those in their 20's and 30's and not hear about not having saved enough, especially after a hand-to-mouth career.

A better idea would be tort reform to eliminate "age discrimination" lawsuits, so that older persons who are out of a job can find one. That is, it's perfectly fine with me--- I'm what you call "old"--- if it becomes customary to pay older employees less in their last working years. Less is a lot more than nothing.

This is a certifiable academic twit. Probably his history includes treatises that he wrote on how good it will be when poor foreigners get all of our manufacturing jobs--- we're "knowledge workers" don't you see?

"Making ends meet" is not the reason why a lot of us oldsters are still working, it's the medical insurance problem. We have to work to HAVE MEDICAL INSURANCE. At a time in life when we need the insurance more than ever because of the onset of various conditions, Mr. Galbraith is proposing to extend the period of time between retirement and eligibility for medicare/medicaid. You can't be serious!

A fabulous idea. I'm all for it. It could be easily paid for by simply subjecting ALL income to the SS tax, rather than cutting it off at the first 100K as we do now. All benefit, so all should pay. While we're at it, I would be more than happy to sign away my rights to all SS retirement benefits if the amount I have paid in over 40 years, and the amount my employer's have paid in on my hehalf, compounded at a fair interest rate such as 3%, was repaid to me. This would produce substantially more income than my future benefits are supposed tobe...

Great! ANOTHER plan to bankrupt Social Security. First they lowered FICA taxes so that SS has less coming in. Now, you want to put even more Baby Boomers on the program than the program was designed to support. So, instead of paying for them on Income Tax dollars (Unemployment Insurance), you want to rob the SS Trust Fund by paying for them with FICA tax which has already been lowered. Traitor!

Wow, Mr. Galbraith is really wrong on this.
How is it a good thing to transfer one set of non-working, subsidy-receiving group (unemployed) to another non-working, subsidy-receiving group (social security)?

In fact, his proposal is WORSE, because it costs taxpayers more to fund social security (higher payout and indefinite time period) than to fund unemployment (lower payout and limited to 26 weeks (or 2 years right now).

So his solution is to make the winners (laborers whose contribution is valuable enough that their employer still employs them) stop working, and give the jobs to laborers who were not considered valuable enough to employ?

Classic example of government intervention, picking winners and losers, instead of letting the marketplace -- the people -- do so. And it always ends the same: resources within the economy are thrown off of equilibrium and not allocated in the most efficient way (in other words, economic growth is inhibited).

Here's a radical idea: how about NO retirement age at all?!?! Let those who want to work keep working if they want to, and if they are still considered valuable by an employer. And let those who don't want to work, stop. If you can't afford to stop working, then keep working.

Better plan ahead, folks, so you can stop when you want to stop. Because the government is not going to have the money to pay out you Social Security. Every year that passes is another trillion dollars in the whole.

I hate to say it, because voters consider these words blasphemous, but it's time to cut our losses with these entitlement programs that drag down the economy. We need to find a way to wind them down. Let's learn our lesson.

Wait a second. Stop (bad) macroeconomics and consider microeconomics for a second. First we need to examine whether the unemployment issue is really the crisis people think it is. Prior to the past couple of years, the incentives to hide one's employment and take payment under-the-table were fairly small and consistent, and the risks pretty high. Now, with indefinitely extended unemployment benefits, the incentives are huge. I'll bet that the 9% unemployment figure is grossly overinflated, and that uncollected income tax is a growing piece of the deficit. Keep in mind that once someone starts to lie about their income, it is really hard to stop.

What is new, is really old. Where did you think mandatory age 65 retirement and the 40 hour work week came from ?

Depression solutions - Kind of a job sharing.

retiring the older generation is the most workable solution. If more and more graduates cannot find jobs the US may find itself having to deal with a mob in years to come.