HILITE-->The predictable result? Among Americans between 50 and 64, the bottom 75 percent by wealth average just $26,395 in retirement assets. Overall, says Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, the nation’s “retirement deficit” — the difference between what Americans have saved up for retirement and what they need to maintain their standard of living once retired — now totals $6.6 trillion. America ‘retirement deficit’ now totals $6.6 trillion. These corporate leaders — the nearly 200 CEOs who run the influential Business Roundtable and the over 135 chief execs who bankroll the two-year-old lobby group known as “Fix the Debt” — seldom ever mention “Social Security benefits” and “cuts” in the same sentence. They speak instead in euphemisms. The nation, they intone, cannot afford the current level of “entitlement” spending. In fact, these CEOs are sitting on what figures to be the biggest retirement bonanza in modern human history. The CEOs of the Business Roundtable are holding an average $14.6 million in their corporate retirement accounts, enough to pay out a $86,043 monthly benefit once they retire. The typical American worker within 10 years of retirement, by contrast, now has only enough in saved-up personal retirement assets to generate a monthly retirement payout of just $71. If Social Security benefits shrink, notes the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, millions of older Americans will slide into poverty. CEOs like David Cote may not need Social Security. But why are these CEOs driving so hard to cut Social Security for people who do? Several reasons may play here. The corporations these CEOs run don’t pay much in the way of corporate taxes today. They want to pay even less — and the less the federal government spends on Social Security and other “entitlements” like Medicare, the less pressure on lawmakers to seriously tax corporate income. CEOs also have a personal tax-time reason to want to see Social Security cut. Americans this year pay Social Security payroll tax on only the first $113,700 of paycheck income. This tax ceiling rises each year with inflation. But if we eliminated the ceiling entirely — and taxed CEO paychecks at the same rate as the paychecks of average workers — 95 percent of the expected Social Security budget shortfall over the next 75 years would disappear. - See more at: thecontributor/economy/protect-their-entitlement-corporate-ceos-are-attacking-ours-social-security#sthash.FUDnl7Di.dpuf
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 01:00:04 +0000
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