In the U.S., the monthly payments increase the longer one works—researchers have now examined whether delaying retirement is financially worthwhile.
- Earlier retirement: Researchers have analyzed data from the United States to examine whether retiring earlier is worthwhile.
- Findings: The study shows that the financial risk of delaying retirement particularly affects men and low-income groups in the U.S.
- Making the most of it: For sick individuals in the U.S., retiring early can help them receive some of the benefits they paid for—even if they do not have long to live.
It’s not really a pension though. A pension is a retirement product based on how much was paid into it, and there’s often an option to cash it out instead of taking distributions. Social Security is a welfare product that, while tied to how much you put in, provides more value to the poor vs the wealthy and there’s no option to cash out.
The main similarity is that it pays out monthly once you start taking it, but it functions very differently. If you consider SS to be a pension, does that mean an annuity is also a pension? Because again, that’s a very different product.
SS is not a welfare benefit. That is a lie the Republicans have been pushing for decades.
We pay our entire adult lives in order to get payout when we no longer work. It is meant to keep our elders out of poverty, not to line pockets of “welfare queens”, despite what you might have been told.
As it stands now, I’m told I’ll only get 70% of what i am due because of decades of government stealing the money and calling it a loan.
Yes, the definition of a “welfare program” is something that keeps people out of poverty. According to Wikipedia:
That pretty closely matches my understanding of what Social Security is. Here’s the way benefits currently are calculated:
Poorer people will:
So yeah, it’s a forced contribution to a welfare program, but the welfare program is not as generous as others because it also functions as a retirement program for middle class people.
I think we should take this to its logical conclusion:
I’m thinking it could be used to fund a Negative Income Tax (similar to Universal Basic Income), where if you report income under some amount, you get Social Security benefits, regardless of age.
Then you’re reading a bit too much into what clickbait articles say. The actual fact is that Social Security will be underfunded if nothing changes, and there’s plenty of time to make changes.
SS is a defined benefit administered (and guaranteed) by an independent agent. Pension is a defined benefit administered by employer (or PBGC). Seems pretty similar to me.
Annuity is a defined contribution disbursed formulaically by a company you hired. The only similarity is the regular payment.
It’s only defined once you start taking it, until then, all we have are estimates. It’s somewhere in the middle of “defined benefit” and “defined contribution.”
It can be defined benefit or defined contribution, depending on how it’s configured. Your benefits are directly calculated based on how much you put in, whereas Social Security benefits taper off the more you put in, and after a certain point you can’t pay any more in.
A pension pays out assets it has, Social Security pays out based on policy. A pension can go bankrupt if it’s poorly run, Social Security instead operates based on law (which can be changed), which is technically unrelated to tax receipts and fund performance.
They’re quite different systems IMO, and the main similarity is the regular payment, hence why I brought up annuities.
The main difference is who bears the risk. For pensions, it’s the employer, who has to make extra payments if the pension fund falls behind it projected obligations, or surrender its management to PBGC. That open-ended risk is why most companies have abandoned pensions. For SS, it’s the government (although they do have the power to change their legal obligation). For annuities, it’s the recipient, who will just get less money if the annuity’s investments underperform during the accumulation phase.
To me, that’s a pretty big difference between each product.