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You know the difference between the labor force and the unemployment right?
As a large already trained, productive generation ages into retirement and a smaller untrained, unproductive generation enters the workforce, you have two things happen.
1. The older generation slows down their spending as they age (See the Consumer Expenditure Survey) and this has a negative effect on the economy. Especially when this older generation was fueled with the largest debt boom we have ever seen.
2. The younger generation while entering the “work force” has a harder time gaining employment as the economy slows and are not able to help to keep the spending going to take up some of the slake. It is a vicious cycle.
You know the difference between the labor force and the unemployment right?
As a large already trained, productive generation ages into retirement and a smaller untrained, unproductive generation enters the workforce, you have two things happen.
1. The older generation slows down their spending as they age (See the Consumer Expenditure Survey) and this has a negative effect on the economy. Especially when this older generation was fueled with the largest debt boom we have ever seen.
2. The younger generation while entering the “work force” has a harder time gaining employment as the economy slows and are not able to help to keep the spending going to take up some of the slake. It is a vicious cycle.
If we never train the young or give them any authority we'll wind up like the Senate. Fumbling old fools standing in the way of progress
If we never train the young or give them any authority we'll wind up like the Senate. Fumbling old fools standing in the way of progress
That is true but it is also the lifecycle at work. Not a lot we can do, our training has basically been indoctrination, it won't serve them well in the next economic cycle.
For those of you who would like to volunteer all of us for a retirement age hike, I'd like to suggest that you write to your congressfools and advise them that you would like the ability to 'opt out' of receiving SSI when your due age arrives.
There are already too many other federal, state and local entitlement programs that I pay into yet I am completely ineligible to receive the benefit of over the course of my lifetime. I'd like to just partake in one, please. Hopefully SSI will be the one (and only).
Kinda concerns me that I seen no ire here toward a government that created a trust fund, raided it for pet projects (no matter how big or small), and is now whining that there is nothing left to pay out to trustors. As trustees, their position was only to be a tool for wealth management and fiscal guardianship for us, the beneficiaries. If the news is to be believed, the trust fund could have been made whole -- solvent and then some -- if we weren't butting our collective noses into everyones' business around the world. Two days in Iraq can = millions (billions?) of deposits. Those deposits should not have been nor should they continue to be moved to the general fund which is just a slush fund. Something held in trust is held in escrow for something one knows they will be in debt for...if I have $75 in my checking account and I have an electric bill due, I don't run out and buy shoes and tell the electric company that they'll just have to give me more time to pay.
My point is, it's not my generation's or the next generation's (ad infinitum) responsibility to keep providing more fodder for these piggies. I resent the fact that my government sits down with mathematicians and statisticians to try and predict my demise so they can keep my lifelong contributions. *They* have to go back to the drawing board and figure out the next move to make SSI work, and not one that hurts *me* and my generation(s), but one that adjusts the government's line of thinking.
Kinda concerns me that I seen no ire here toward a government that created a trust fund, raided it for pet projects (no matter how big or small), and is now whining that there is nothing left to pay out to trustors. As trustees, their position was only to be a tool for wealth management and fiscal guardianship for us, the beneficiaries. If the news is to be believed, the trust fund could have been made whole -- solvent and then some -- if we weren't butting our collective noses into everyones' business around the world. Two days in Iraq can = millions (billions?) of deposits. Those deposits should not have been nor should they continue to be moved to the general fund which is just a slush fund. Something held in trust is held in escrow for something one knows they will be in debt for...if I have $75 in my checking account and I have an electric bill due, I don't run out and buy shoes and tell the electric company that they'll just have to give me more time to pay.
My point is, it's not my generation's or the next generation's (ad infinitum) responsibility to keep providing more fodder for these piggies. I resent the fact that my government sits down with mathematicians and statisticians to try and predict my demise so they can keep my lifelong contributions. *They* have to go back to the drawing board and figure out the next move to make SSI work, and not one that hurts *me* and my generation(s), but one that adjusts the government's line of thinking.
3,
You need to read back posts, the trust fund is not the issue. The trust fund is not some big account like people think, it is an accounting tool. Revenue (Taxes) come in and payments to beneficiaries goes out. What is left is what people think of as the trust fund. It is "invested" in non-marketable Treasury Bonds and the actual dollars are then used for the on-budget treasury. When we were adding more than we were taking, those bonds kept adding up. Currently there is only about $2 trillion in the fund, not the tens of trillions needed. That will take care of two years worth of benefits in 2018 assuming we still have that much left.
The government was counting on an additional $700 billion added to the fund between now and 2018 but as of last year that excess dried up. Now we are pulling interest (accounting gimmick) from the bonds to cover they outflow.
Take a look at the calculations they go through to come up with the figures we hear. We are doing worse than their worst case projection made 1 and a half years ago. http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/T...ation_2008.pdf
The only fix would be a time machine to go back and create more babies starting in 1962.
3,
You need to read back posts, the trust fund is not the issue. The trust fund is not some big account like people think, it is an accounting tool. Revenue (Taxes) come in and payments to beneficiaries goes out. What is left is what people think of as the trust fund. It is "invested" in non-marketable Treasury Bonds and the actual dollars are then used for the on-budget treasury. When we were adding more than we were taking, those bonds kept adding up. Currently there is only about $2 trillion in the fund, not the tens of trillions needed. That will take care of two years worth of benefits in 2018 assuming we still have that much left.
The government was counting on an additional $700 billion added to the fund between now and 2018 but as of last year that excess dried up. Now we are pulling interest (accounting gimmick) from the bonds to cover they outflow.
Take a look at the calculations they go through to come up with the figures we hear. We are doing worse than their worst case projection made 1 and a half years ago. http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/T...ation_2008.pdf
The only fix would be a time machine to go back and create more babies starting in 1962.
Thanks, I read each post and I'm aware of treasury bonds and beneficiaries and the movement between the funds, that's how I ended up here. I do read these calculations, and what I also realize is that this is not a recent discovery. No one all of a sudden face-palmed themselves within the past 5 years and said 'OH $--t! I forgot to pay this bill!' This has been an on-going issue to anyone with a 4th grade math level since the inception of the fund in the first place.
My point was all the calculations that are all of a sudden spilled forth into the media, and all the concerns about how there aren't enough people contributing and the contributions are not high enough to meet needs (demands?) are a fabulous way to keep people in-fighting. The shell game is out of peas; I get it. However I won't let anyone off the hook. I have no problem contributing more of my paycheck if I were assured it was true to its destination; but allowing the government to shoot me before I'm dead? I don't think so. Raising the age is not going to cure all the ills of this program, and it seems to be too egregiously self-serving for the government to suggest that this would be the first (and only?) option to make amends.
I guess my line of thinking is this is not a 'run on the bank.' This has been a slow progressing disease, the symptoms of which have been largely ignored. And to just raise the age for SSI is just pulling the band-aid off slowly. I'd take a raise in the age if it were a series of 4 or 5 things that were going to happen simultaneously, like no more trust fund dips (no matter how you parlay the flim-flam) for any reason, no more treasury paper notes but rather real cash deposits managed by oh I don't know...Jack Welch? Someone with real world experience?
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