More retirees, longer life expectancy, larger benefits, and fewer workers - these trends have meant substantial increases in the payroll tax. Since the social security program began, the payroll tax has increased more than 500 percent.
Sharp increases in the minimum wage rate are also inflationary. Frequently workers paid more than the minimum gauge their wages relative to it. This is especially true of those workers who are paid by the hour. An increase in the minimum therefore increases their demands for higher wages in order to maintain their place in the structure of wages. And when the increase is as sharp as it is in H.R. 7935, the result is sure to be a fresh surge of inflation.
Although Caterpillar has fought vigorously against writing guaranteed pay increases into its contracts - and won, every time - it does offer market-based wage increases. It has also given quarterly bonuses to workers.
I find the joy of the 'doing' increases. Creativity increases. Intuition increases. The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes.
As you know, in the 2000 campaign I articulated a point of view that we ought to have personal savings accounts for younger workers that would make sure those younger workers receive benefits equal to or greater than that which is expected, ... I still maintain the same position.
To fix Social Security, we should first stop using the Consumer Price Index to adjust benefits for inflation. Using the C.P.I. overstates the impact of inflation and has also led to larger increases in benefits for Social Security recipients than the income gains of typical American workers.
Social Security is the foundation stone of that kind of retirement security. It not only needs to be strengthened in order to make sure it's there for younger baby boomers and Generations X and Y, but it probably needs to be strengthened and expanded because the retirement benefits now being offered by most employers are not sufficient to support middle-income Americans in their long years of retirement.
Life always gets harder towards the summit - the cold increases, responsibility increases
Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. As one climbs higher, life becomes ever harder, the coldness increases, responsibility increases.
While more people are working later in life because of happy things like longer life expectancy, they are also doing so because of very sad things, like a lack of Social Security benefits or retirement plans.
The more various our artificial necessities, the wider is our circle of pleasure; for all pleasure consists in obviating necessities as they rise; luxury, therefore, as it increases our wants, increases our capacity for happiness
Just like a computer, we must remember things in the order in which entropy increases. This makes the second law of thermodynamics almost trivial. Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. You can't have a safer bet than that!
Technology to me does two things: it increases the velocity of communication and increases the number of people who can participate. That's it. That's really all technology for our entire history has ever done.
Since Social Security faces a large gap between what it promises younger workers and what it can afford to pay them, private savings will likely need to play a larger role in retirement planning for younger workers.
Knowledge is a public good and increases in value as the number of people possessing it increases.
The wise are always impatient, for he that increases knowledge increases impatience of folly.