Neg - Social Security - Michigan 7 2023 BFHGR

Neg---Social Security---BFGHR
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Case
Retirement Crisis Adv
No Retirement Crisis---1NC
A ‘retirement crisis’ is a myth.
Andrew Biggs 21, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 12/13/2021, “The US ‘retirement Crisis’ Is a Media Myth,” https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-retirement-crisis-is-a-media-myth/
The holidays are a time when we express gratitude for making it through another year, and for the family, friends and co-workers who helped us do it.
But with each passing year, we also come closer to retirement. And for that we may want to show thanks for something that is seldom mentioned: a retirement system that has grown significantly stronger over time, and which today helps the vast majority of Americans live well in old age.
That our country’s retirement system is working well is so counterintuitive that even many experts have a difficult time processing the idea. We are inundated, seemingly every day, with bad news regarding retirement:
“Americans Entering Old Age the Least Prepared in Decades,” The Wall Street Journal says.
“Bankruptcy booms among older Americans,” The New York Times tells us.
“Retirees will outlive their savings by a decade,” says The World Economic Forum.
Half of older Americans have no retirement savings, the Government Accountability Office says.
“Social Security benefits have lost one-third of their buying power since 2000,” The Washington Post tells us.
“Retirees’ reliance on Social Security nears an all-time high,” warns USA Today.
All of these proclamations, I might add, are provably false. Not just technically false or false in some minor way, but often expressing the opposite of what has actually happened.
And yet, this sort of media coverage leads many Americans to despair that, in the words of Jane Bryant Quinn, our nation’s “retirement system is broken.”
Pension Realities
But when we skip the media articles and simply look at the data, a very different story emerges in nearly every area of retirement savings. This story is far more encouraging and gives us hope for our own retirement and those of people we care for.
Many retirement advocates pine for the days of the traditional “defined benefit” pension. Yet rose-colored glasses prevent them from recalling that less than 40% of private-sector workers participated in a DB pension, even at their peak in 1975.
Or that, according to a 1972 congressional report, 9 in 10 workers who formally participated in a traditional pension failed to vest in their benefits. In a 1981 Social Security Administration survey of new retirees, only 27% reported receiving any private pension benefit. Among the bottom half of the income distribution, it was just 9%.
Today, it’s a dramatically different story. In a 2015 analysis of IRS data, the Social Security Administration found 61% of private-sector workers participating in a retirement plan, with an additional 14% offered a plan but not enrolled. Similarly, a 2017 Census Bureau analysis found 61% of Americans 65 and older receiving benefits from a private retirement plan.
401(k) Advantages
Whatever their shortcomings, the introduction of 401(k) retirement accounts in 1978 marked an inflection point in Americans’ retirement savings. Federal Reserve figures show that in 1978, total retirement plan balances were equal to half of employees’ total wages and salaries, with savings-to-salary ratios rising about 1 percentage point per year.
But from 1978 through 2020, the ratio of retirement savings to the employee wages they must eventually replace increased by nearly 8 percentage points per year, with total savings rising sevenfold and currently sitting at 375% of employee wages and salaries. Other data, from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, show retirement savings increasing in every age, income, educational and racial/ethnic group.
We all know that 401(k)s aren’t perfect, but they have two key advantages over traditional pensions. First, employers are willing to offer them. The passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act in 1974 loosened vesting requirements for DB pension benefits and tightened funding standards, which was good. But these steps also led to an immediate and continuing decline in the share of employees offered a pension.
It turns out that when employers actually had to pay the benefits they promised, and were required to put up money to back it up, traditional pensions weren’t as attractive an employee benefit. While 401(k)s face challenges with administrative burdens and, increasingly, liabilities to employee lawsuits, employers are simply more willing to offer them.
Second, while private-sector pensions were funded almost exclusively through employer contributions, 401(k)s receive contributions from both employers and employees. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that employers have largely maintained their contributions to retirement plans, while the addition of employee contributions has boosted savings to much higher levels.
In 1975, private-sector retirement plans received total contributions equal to 5.8% of employee wages; in 2020, contributions reached 8.6% of pay, fully 48% higher.
Rising Retirement Security
The result of broader retirement plan participation and higher contributions has been rising retirement incomes. Congressional Budget Office data show that, since 1979, the inflation-adjusted average household income of Americans 65 and older has risen by 119%, more than doubling.
By contrast, incomes for working-age households increased by only 75%. Census Bureau research shows that retirement incomes have risen not just for the rich but across income distribution and have brought old-age poverty to record lows.
Every media story on the nation’s supposed “retirement crisis” can find someone for whom things have gone poorly, which isn’t a challenge in a country of 330 million people. But surveys that ask large numbers of actual Americans tell a story that mimics the hard data.
Eight in 10 retirees tell Gallup they have sufficient money, not merely to survive, but to “live comfortably.” Less than 5% of retirees tell a Federal Reserve survey they are “finding it hard to get by.” Likewise, in a survey from Vanguard, only 5% of U.S. retirees describe their own financial situation as a retirement crisis.
Seventy-six percent of Americans over 65 report in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances that their retirement income is “At least enough to maintain your standard of living,” versus only 61% in 1992. The share describing their retirement income as “totally inadequate” has fallen by almost half, while the share of retirees calling their incomes “very satisfactory” nearly tripled.
Americans are also are working longer, which is one of the most effective ways to boost retirement incomes. A longer work life means more savings, higher Social Security benefits, and a shorter retirement in which savings will be drawn down.
While for decades following World War II the labor force participation of older Americans had been declining, beginning around 1990, things turned around. By 2019, just before COVID, the share of Americans aged 55 to 64 who were working was the highest on record.
Americans are also delaying claiming Social Security benefits, retiring nearly a year and a half later today than in the mid-1990s. Higher earnings and delayed claiming led to Social Security benefits for new retirees in 2020 being fully 32% higher after inflation than benefits received by new retirees in 2000.
These may not be the only relevant facts to inform discussions of retirement income security. But they are facts nonetheless that provide much-needed context to discussions of how well the U.S. retirement system is working.
No Retirement Crisis---Bias/Tradeoff Turn---1NC
Their ev’s media hype, and the plan creates, not prevents, the funding tradeoffs.
Andrew Biggs 21, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 12/13/2021, “The US ‘retirement Crisis’ Is a Media Myth,” https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-retirement-crisis-is-a-media-myth/
But there’s more to it than that. The “retirement crisis” narrative is helped along by the fact that nearly no one has an incentive to deny it. Financial firms unsurprisingly want you to save more for retirement, so they’re not going to tell you that you’re over-saving. Political progressives distrust private markets and want Social Security to play a stronger role, so they downplay any progress.
The news media like frightening stories. No one clicks on an article with the headline, “U.S. retirement savings doing well.” But “Americans Entering Old Age the Least Prepared in Decades”? That Wall Street Journal article won a journalism award while getting key facts wrong about Americans’ savings and retirement incomes.
Congressional Republicans, still shell-shocked from George W. Bush’s unsuccessful 2005 effort to reform Social Security, have yet to find a new narrative.
But there’s a cost to excessive pessimism. As important as we all consider saving for retirement, households have other priorities — such as buying a home or sending their children to college, both of which have only become more expensive over time.
Expanding Social Security, as many congressional Democrats advocate to tackle our so-called retirement crisis, would leave less money for the government to tackle our other national priorities, including health care, education and infrastructure.
The simple fact, as the data show, is that never before have so many Americans saved so much for retirement, nor had stronger incomes in old age or a lower risk of poverty. That doesn’t mean the U.S. retirement system doesn’t face challenges. But it does make those challenges easier to address.
No Retirement Crisis---2NC
Retirement crisis is fake — polls and data
Mark Henricks 17 — (Mark Henricks, Special To Cnbc; ; Published: 7/5/2017; “Reports of a retirement crisis are off the mark: Think tank”; CNBC; Accessed: 6-26-2023; https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/05/reports-of-a-us-retirement-crisis-are-off-the-mark-think-tank-study.html)//Pen-SY
So is it possible the retirement crisis is oversold? “It’s not merely possible, it’s probable,” said Andrew Biggs, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and former deputy commissioner for policy at the Social Security Administration. For one thing, he notes that while many contend low-earning Americans aren’t saving enough for retirement, poverty is lower during retirement than during people’s working years. A 2016 Census Bureau report shows that in 2015 just 8.8 percent of people 65 and older were impoverished, compared to 19.7 percent of children under 18 and 12.4 percent of 18- to 65-year-olds. If there were a crisis, Biggs says, retired people should be complaining. Yet a 2016 Gallup poll found 74 percent of U.S. retirees say they are living comfortably. And a 2017 Vanguard report found just 16 percent of retirees were dissatisfied with their financial situation, compared with 21 percent of pre-retirees. Perhaps most surprisingly, Biggs points to recent research suggesting retiree incomes generally match or even exceed their pre-retirement incomes. A 2017 study by Internal Revenue Service and Investment Company Institute researchers analyzed tax returns and found most people experience no income dropoff after claiming Social Security. In fact, the median household’s income rises after retirement. “It’s hard to paint a picture where this leads to a true retirement crisis,” Biggs said. Retirement policy can get tangled up in ideology, partisan politics and Beltway power struggles. Presumably, those concerns would not influence a Canadian such as Frederick Vettese, chief actuary at Toronto-based human resource advisor Morneau Shepell and author of The Essential Retirement Guide: A Contrarian’s Perspective. Vettese also doubts the retirement crisis. “The retirement savings crisis has definitely been oversold,” he said. “A good indication of this is that pre-retirees have a significantly higher level of concern about whether they are financially prepared for retirement than is the case for retirees.” Buttressing Vettese’s point, the 2017 Vanguard study found that 10 percent of U.S. pre-retirees considered their financial situation to be in crisis, while just 4 percent of retired people felt likewise.
No aging crisis — poverty data confirms
Andrew G. Biggs 17 — (Andrew G. Biggs, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously served as the principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration, as well as working on Social Security reform for the White House National Economic Council; ; Published: 10-9-2017; "The Washington Post Gets Retirement Wrong"; National Review; Accessed: 6-26-2023; https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/washington-post-retirement-story-all-wrong/)//Pen-SY
Experts disagree on how well prepared Americans are for retirement. Data on income and savings aren’t perfect, and economists differ as to how much they think a household actually needs to fund a comfortable retirement. Some studies find a large retirement-savings gap, while others — including some well-respected work — find that most Americans are doing well in saving for retirement. I’m on the more optimistic side of that debate, but any honest researcher would admit that a legitimate debate on retirement income security exists. Which is why the Washington Post’s lengthy exposition of “The New Reality of Old Age in America” is so disheartening. It has everything that poor journalism exhibits: excessive reliance on anecdotes, the use of misleading and sometimes outright incorrect data, and the one-sided citation of experts. Here is a paragraph where the authors summarize their major conclusions: While some work by choice rather than need, millions of others are entering their golden years with alarmingly fragile finances. Fundamental changes in the U.S. retirement system have shifted responsibility for saving from the employer to the worker, exacerbating the nation’s rich-poor divide. Two recent recessions devastated personal savings. And at a time when 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day, Social Security benefits have lost about a third of their purchasing power since 2000. Nearly all of this is either misleading or simply wrong. The Post reporters focus on a key statistic — that the percentage of older Americans who continue to work is rising — and spin it into a picture of seniors on the edge of financial disaster. The Post illustrates this trend with portraits of low-income retirees seeking to make ends meet by continuing to work, often in difficult jobs. Americans are in fact working longer, which is both to be expected as lifespans increase and to be celebrated as seniors overcome age discrimination, health factors, and the deterioration of their technical skills to extend their work lives and build retirement savings. Moreover, as I pointed out in a 2015 Wall Street Journal op-ed, retirees aren’t all working at Walmart-greeter wages. Older Americans’ labor-force participation rose even as that of younger Americans fell, but older workers maintained their wage levels. So the Post’s whole narrative that working longer is evidence of a retirement crisis is suspect. Worse, most of the Post’s supporting evidence also falls short. Just to start, one might expect that if retirees had “alarmingly fragile finances,” as the Post claims, they would also have a high poverty rate. And yet we see precisely the opposite: Recent research from two Census Bureau economists, C. Adam Bee and Joshua Mitchell, finds that only 6.9 percent of Americans aged 65 and older have incomes below the poverty line. The poverty rate among working-age Americans is roughly double that level; among children, it’s at least triple. If poverty drops as Americans retire, how can that be a sign that our retirement system — which combines Social Security with employer-sponsored retirement plans and personal saving — isn’t working?
SS Not Key---1NC
Social Security’s not key to retirement savings---prefer new data.
Warshawsky ’22 [Mark; Spring; senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on Social Security and retirement issues, served as deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy at the Social Security Administration and assistant secretary for economic policy at the US Department of the Treasury, PhD in economics from Harvard; National Affairs, “Reforming Social Security,” https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/reforming-social-security]
To what extent do America's seniors rely on Social Security benefits for their retirement income? For many years, policy analysts and the SSA itself relied on the Current Population Survey (CPS) alone to answer that question. According to these data, Social Security represented by far the largest component of seniors' incomes, and for nearly a quarter of that population, more than 90% of their income. Doubts about the accuracy and completeness of this survey data, however, have mounted over the years. Under my direction, researchers at the SSA completed a lengthy, painstaking project of supplementing the CPS data with SSA and IRS administrative records. These new data, which represent the state of affairs in 2015, show a substantially lower share for Social Security in seniors' income and a much higher share for pensions and retirement accounts. Using the CPS data only, Social Security accounted for nearly 35% of total senior income, while pensions and retirement accounts represented only 22%. With the new data, the reality is almost flipped: Social Security makes up only 30% of total senior income, while pensions and retirement accounts represent 36%. (The other main sources of income include earnings and asset income.) Similarly, using the CPS data alone, fewer than half of senior families had pension- and retirement-account income. But according to the new data, nearly 70% do — in range of the 85% to 90% of those with Social Security income. Finally, whereas according to the CPS data, more than 50% of the senior population relied on Social Security for at least half of their income (and 25% relied on it for 90% or more), the new, more accurate, and more inclusive data reduce those rates to 40% and less than 15% of the senior population, respectively.
SS Not Key---2NC
Social Security isn’t key.
Andrew Biggs 21, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 12/13/2021, “The US ‘retirement Crisis’ Is a Media Myth,” https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-us-retirement-crisis-is-a-media-myth/
Better Data, Better Story
The most interesting question is why so little of this story is known. Part of the story is technical. For instance, for years we have heard statistics claiming that one-third or more of retirees receive nearly all their income from Social Security. As it turns out, however, that figure is an error.
The household survey the government draws that figure from has been shown to dramatically understate the income that retirees derive from IRAs, 401(k)s and private pensions, coming in far short of what those same retirees report on their tax returns.
Subsequent research using IRS data has found that the median retiree’s income is nearly one-third larger than is claimed in household survey data, the poverty rate is lower by almost 2 percentage points, and the share of retirees receiving 90% or more of their income from Social Security is only 12% to 14%.
The same data issues cause us to underestimate the share of Americans who participate in retirement plans at work.
In 2015, the Social Security Administration examined Americans’ responses to a survey asking about retirement savings at work. In the survey, 65% of private sector employees said they were offer

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