Question

Congratulations, President Trump just appointed you to serve as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. Please write him a paragraph or so on how you believe we can save social security.

Answer 1

Social Security offers variety of benefits & helps the citizens of our country to live a secured life. As the Secretary of Health and Human Services, I would like to suggest few measures by which we can save social security. Firstly, as the life expectancy of people is increasing, therefore, we need to increase the full retirement age. This will prompt people to delay retiring & claim social security benefits. Also, we can allow for partial privatization of the program by putting a small percentage of an individual's retirement benefits in a retirement account which the individual can invest on their own & earn higher returns. We can also cut benefits for everyone in order to save social security. Reducing the benefits for everyone will result in lower payout to everyone & help to fix the social security shortfall. We can also apply means-testing & find the Americans who have enough means & does not require assistance from government & eliminate social security benefits for such people as they have already saved enough for their retirement. Also, social security funds can be invested in stocks instead of federal government securities which provide low returns. This will help to generate more revenue as stocks yield higher average returns. The benefits of high income households should be taxed more. The modest tax increase for affluent class will contribute to raise revenue & make the social security program more progressive. Lastly, we can increase the payroll taxes on everyone in order to cover the social security costs. This will help to generate the needed revenue. I hope that you find these suggestions valuable & we can apply them in order to save social security.