More on Social Security and 401(k)s

Ryan Cooper at Political Animal is another person who wants to increase Social Security benefits, and suggests a different way of financing them.

There is another source of funding we could tap for a Social Security increase before we talk about raiding other pots of money [such as Medicare, as per Josh Barro]: the 401k tax exemption. Originally this was supposed to usher in the neoliberal free market retirement utopia. It failed (instead we’ve created yet another set of rent-seeking parasites, this time in the form of objectively useless mutual funds).  

The 401k exemption costs somewhere around $200 billion per year (depending on the estimation), and it doesn’t work. That money could be plowed into Social Security right away, and if that’s still not enough to keep most seniors out of poverty, we can talk other funding sources. Because as [Duncan] Black says, lots of people are set to retire right now without nearly enough to make it. Regardless of whose fault that is, shall we let them starve? 

I say no.

Hmmm. As 401(k)s cap out at $17,000 (for 2012), I don't think they're the worse thing in the world. Basically, they offer a nice opportunity to the higher reaches of the middle as well as the upper class. But they offer no benefit to the median American household, which only made $50,500 (in 2011).

And 401(k)s also require some sophistication, especially around balancing the portfolio (and moving more and more to bonds as the investor ages). And most people, God love 'em, don't have it. So I wouldn't mind see this replaced by pensions (which we don't have anymore) or increased Social Security benefits.

Another big source for new Social Security funding would be to have FICA taxes apply to income, period. Not just earned income, but investment income as well. As we wrote a while back:

The magic words are “unearned income.” The 1% have pulled off a brilliant con over last 30 years, where they’ve been able to convince the government that unearned income – the kind that comes from capital gains, dividends and interest – should not be subject to the kind of taxation that the rest of us face. In terms of income tax, long term capital gains are taxed at 15%, far below the current maximum marginal rate of 35%. 

But it gets worse in terms of Social Security, because these things have ... never been taxed at all. 

In 2009, the IRS reported that there was nearly $7.7 trillion in income, $5.7 of which was salaries and wages. Now, just because something isn't salaries and wages does not necessarily mean it would qualify as "unearned income," but it does give us a sense of scale. If only half of it was -- $1 trillion -- then applying the 2009 employee Social Security rate of 6.2% would yield an additional $62 billion in revenue. 

And all of this increase would be on income -- literally -- that no one worked for.

$62 billion —which is just a guesstimate —is a lot less than the $200 billion Cooper's talking about. So maybe it's time to talk about scaling back the 401(k) — that's a conversation I'd be willing to have.

To put things into perspective, in January 2013, Social Security paid 46 million people $55 bilion dollars in old-age benefits. Annualized, this works out to be $660 billion a year. So what Cooper is talking about is a 30% increase in retirement benefits. As the average monthly benefit was $1200, we're talking about how giving old folk (on average) a whopping $1560 a month, or $18,720 a year.

So I think we're in agreement with Cooper on the amount, and now it's just a question of paying for it. Fortunately, we now have a couple of good ideas on the table.