visits to the Philadelphia area, as I reported June 17.
I'm all for keeping Grandma and Grandpa busy and self-supporting. But at a time when so many jobless people in their 50s are having a tough time finding work that pays more than a fraction of their former salaries, can we really afford to dump millions of older folks back into the workforce?
Not everyone who has studied the problem in depth thinks that's the way to go. Last year, the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan group of professionals who project the costs of benefit programs for a living, used Social Security data to describe a string of choices that would reduce the program's future deficits, and in some cases even boost benefits.
Yes, it's forced savings. It would be better if all Americans could afford to, and be persuaded to, adequately fund their retirements.
The report, "Fixing Social Security: Adequate Benefits, Adequate Financing," lays out the problem: If nothing is done, Social Security will start spending more than it brings in by the 2020s. By the 2030s, the program would run out of reserves, leaving enough income from ongoing worker and employer deductions to pay only three-quarters of the promised benefits.
We could fix that, the academy says, by boosting today's payroll deduction from 6.2 percent to 7.2 percent, for both workers and employers. That would hit the self-employed, who pay both taxes, harder. The academy says it would also make Social Security solvent until everyone currently working is dead, or longer.
