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The difference is significant. On average a white woman out-lives a black man by 10 years. That's a lot of wealth redistribution. The SS retirement age is su

The difference is significant. On average a white woman out-lives a black man by 10 years. That's a lot of wealth redistribution. The SS retirement age is surely intended to correlate to something akin to stage of life, ability to perform labor, etc. There have to be better ways to do this than simply drawing a line in the sand that applies to every group. One of the many ways this could be done, and I only mention it for its relative simplicity, would be to privatize and switch to a defined contribution system rather than a defined benefit system. This has other problems, of course, but it would at least allow a person to pass on whatever they accumulated to their children, even if they didn't get to use it themselves.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> On average a white woman out-lives a black man by 10 years. Most of the difference in life expectancy at birth is because black men are particularly likely to die as children or in young adulthood without having paid much, if anything, into Social Security. At age 65, the difference in life expectancy between black men and white women is about 4 years, and it's about 3 years between black men and black women. And about 2 years between black men and white men. The main redistribution is that between men and women, regardless of race. There's a smaller racial redistribution effect. > it for its relative simplicity, would be to privatize and switch to a defined contribution system rather than a defined benefit system. This has other problems, of course, but it would at least allow a person to pass on whatever they accumulated to their children, even if they didn't get to use it themselves. It would be a far simpler change to simply make survivor benefits for dependents of a worker who dies early more generous (and on a sliding scale depending on how early they die),though if you do that without decreasing baseline benefits you need to do it at the same time as a revenue enhancement like uncapping taxed income and expanding beyond labor income (perhaps with additional bend points, though the existing bend point system may be enough that you don't need that.)

dragonwriter 10y ago

> On average a white woman out-lives a black man by 10 years. Most of the difference in life expectancy at birth is because black men are particularly likely to die as children or in young adulthood without having paid much, if anything, into Social Security. At age 65, the difference in life expectancy between black men and white women is about 4 years, and it's about 3 years between black men and black women. And about 2 years between black men and white men. The main redistribution is that between men and women, regardless of race. There's a smaller racial redistribution effect. > it for its relative simplicity, would be to privatize and switch to a defined contribution system rather than a defined benefit system. This has other problems, of course, but it would at least allow a person to pass on whatever they accumulated to their children, even if they didn't get to use it themselves. It would be a far simpler change to simply make survivor benefits for dependents of a worker who dies early more generous (and on a sliding scale depending on how early they die),though if you do that without decreasing baseline benefits you need to do it at the same time as a revenue enhancement like uncapping taxed income and expanding beyond labor income (perhaps with additional bend points, though the existing bend point system may be enough that you don't need that.)