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So what's wrong with that? If greedy and corrupt politicians borrowed from the SS fund to fund other projects like the military, that's not the fault of SS.
The Social Security Trust Fund has a SURPLUS of at LEAST>>>>>> 2,200,000,000,000.00 DOLLARS which our government borrows against yearly.....paying 110,000,000,000 in interest on money it borrows....Social Security NOT only pays for itself......it helps keep the rest of the government afloat!.
WRONG because you are NOT COUNTING the future liabilities of the trillions of dollars people have paid into Social Security.. The only way your scenario is true is if you screw out everyone paying into Social Security now, and tell them they arent getting paid.. Is this what you are proposing?
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Originally Posted by PITTSTON2SARASOTA
PS.......apparently you know very little about investing, interest rates and how money can "grow" over a forty year investment timeline.
I LIVE off of investments and I will tell you flat out right now THAT YOU ARE WRONG..
If I go to the bank tomorrow and I borrow $1,000,000 from the bank, using a property I have as collateral, the fact that I'm sitting on $1,000,000 more tomorrow than I am today, doesnt mean I "profited" $1,000,000. THAT MONEY NEEDS PAID BACK..
What you social security proponents want to do is count the revenues coming in and IGNORE the IOU's payable to the citizens. True, you could do this because Social Security is a tax and there is no obligation of the US Government to pay people social security, but are you seriously going to sit here and tell me you support screwing everyone who's paid into it and believe their payments into social security dont represent future liabilities?
Here's a clue: it's zero. Since you can't collect a paper loan from yourself!
Correct.. this is why borrowed money can be spent, but not taxed because the net proceeds = zero..
You get cash now, but you gain an IOU = net profit of $0
These people want to completely ignore the IOU and only count the cash now.. stupidity at its finest...
WRONG because you are NOT COUNTING the future liabilities of the trillions of dollars people have paid into Social Security.. The only way your scenario is true is if you screw out everyone paying into Social Security now, and tell them they arent getting paid.. Is this what you are proposing?
What about the people who have been paying into Social Security for the past 25 years like me? If you cut it you screw over people like me. Corrupt politicians borrowed from SS to fund other projects and now you want to me my generation suffer, thanks, but no thanks.
What about the people who have been paying into Social Security for the past 25 years like me? If you cut it you screw over people like me. Corrupt politicians borrowed from SS to fund other projects and now you want to me my generation suffer, thanks, but no thanks.
I'm not suggesting we screw anyone, but by your own admission you are "due" money back right? And if you are due money back for paying into it for 25 years, then so is everyone else now paying into it, would you not agree? Where are these future liabilities displayed on the charts? They arent!!
Your chart of income/expenses of the social security budgets IGNORE these IOUs payable to the current taxpayers paying into the system..
They pay far more out in Social Security than you were ever promised. healthcare, prescriptions, utility assistance, housing, NONE of these costs were calculated into what you paid for 25+ years.
How about if we look at the liabilities of Medicare, prescriptions, and the $15T in social security liabilities? http://www.usdebtclock.org/
You want to tell me where we are getting $113 TRILLION from and then tell me we arent broke?
What about the people who have been paying into Social Security for the past 25 years like me? If you cut it you screw over people like me. Corrupt politicians borrowed from SS to fund other projects and now you want to me my generation suffer, thanks, but no thanks.
This is a legitimate argument for paying higher taxes or cutting other spending to maintain social security or phase it out more slowly. Simply put, too many people planned for it to be there and cutting it drastically and quickly would have horrific consequences for lots of older people. Just cutting off social security all of a sudden (rather than say, slowing or stopping it's growth) is a really, really bad idea purely in terms of the human harm.
That said, people as a whole get more out of the system than they put it (it's a far milder ponzi scheme than medicare, and is only slowly running into trouble as birthrates slow), so, "I deserve every penny of current benefits cause I paid for it" isn't quite true unless you're on the high end of the income spectrum, and it certainly isn't true for your generation as a whole. Of course, this is all taking as true politicians lies that payroll taxes were treated any differently from any other tax in practice, which they weren't.
It doesn't pay for itself, to answer the thread title. With all the boomers retiring, it is quickly going in the negative. Last year it was in the red for the first time.
And RWers don't want to cut it. I can only speak for myself, but I want to be able to opt out, or at least privatize it. At the VERY least, we need better scrutiny of those receiving SSI and SSDI. People think it's so hard to get but there are exceptions to that and these people are essentially scamming the system...they end up remaining on SS for life when they could be working still. I know someone who has a child with cerebral palsy...the child gets SSDI but his medical bills are completely taken care of by a local group (well, it's a national group but the local chapter takes care of it) and I believe they also have Medicaid. The mom works full time and the dad works as much as he feels like, which isn't much. Anytime his wife gets a raise, he works fewer hours so they don't cut the SSDI (he has actually admitted this). His rent increased one time and I remember him saying he hopes SS will pay out more so they can afford the extra $100/month. Scammers like this are more common than you would think and this is part of what is destroying the system. But the bigger problem is the boomers retiring and starting to collect en masse.
The Social Security Trust Fund has a SURPLUS of at LEAST>>>>>> 2,200,000,000,000.00 DOLLARS which our government borrows against yearly.....paying 110,000,000,000 in interest on money it borrows....Social Security NOT only pays for itself......it helps keep the rest of the government afloat!.
IF you DO NOT provide links to back up your rhetoric; than I assume you are simply furthering a political agenda that is not based in facts and/or reality!
PS.......apparently you know very little about investing, interest rates and how money can "grow" over a forty year investment timeline.
Links??? What links do I need..it is what it is....Individuals put in x amount and get MORE in return then they ever ever everrrr get back normally....Pal its a ponzi scheme,plain and simple and like all ponzi schemes there doomed to fail!
Further more who the hell is the Govt to take peoples money??????
All these stupid social programs started by dumb Presidents....
How about this..stop taking out of my check...S.S./Medicare/caide..money to fund food stamps/welfare and every other sh*t program and let the PEOPLE decide how to invest there OWN money!!!!
That would be a liberals worst nitemare...People who think on there own but the funny thing is I only blame liberal/Progressive 1/2 I blame weak minded/sadsacks who cant think for themselves!!!!!!!!
Wake up people and start thinking for yourself!
People make this countries problems to be so hard to fix.......BULLSH*T....Problems can be solved in no time,get some damn common sense back in this county!
SS is a pay-go system, meaning your taxes fund current retirees. The years when excess revenue is more than payouts we are left with a surplus, that surplus is placed in nontradable government bonds earning interest. (Trust fund) The trust fund is actually smaller than most think, it is only about $2.6 trillion. (SS and Medi trust funds are $4.6 T)
Unfortunately that is also just a claim on future workers. When a bond is redeemed they bring it over to the "on-budget" portion of the government and first look for excess tax revenue to pay off the bond. If we are running a budget deficit the bond proceeds will be redeemed by issuing new on-budget debt through the normal budgetary process.
SS reports you cite are based on the median economic and demographic assumptions, if in the future we do worse than their straight line estimates (for example) 5.5% unemployment. They assume that in the next 75 years unemployment will drop below 7% by 2014 and after 2018 never go above 5.5%. Their WORST CASE assumption puts unemployment never going back above 6.5%. Needles to say these assumptions are not realistic.
We all need to take note whenever we hear about Social Security solvency and funding dates, they are talking about very generous median economic, birth/death rates, etc. Basically these projections have been off dramatically in the past.
In 2010 SS was in the red by $49 billion, both the CBO and SSA show that we will have a trillion dollar deficit over the next decade. Reports as recent as 2008 said we would have a trillion dollar surplus over that same time.
A deficit does not mean missing checks (yet) it just adds more to our on budget debt. When they redeem trustfund bonds they get added to the annual deficit and our national debt. So as opposed to running up intergovernmental debt that does not need to go into the open market for funding, they issue the bonds to themselves. Once it is transfered to on budget debt it increase the about of bonds we need the world to buy.
In 2010 there were 1,509,278 net new beneficiaries of SS checks. Ten years ago in 2000 the number was 462,740. Those dying usually have much smaller checks than those now retiering.
The problem is compounding fast.
Read about probability analysis, and banding of economic forecasts. They are giving you a fantasy about SS and the future.
The reason the lying, thieving government is going after Social Security, which generations of American workers have paid real, hard-earned money into, is the same reason Willy Sutton robbed banks: "because that's where the money is."
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Scammers like this are more common than you would think and this is part of what is destroying the system. But the bigger problem is the boomers retiring and starting to collect en masse.
