For the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less than it is spending on benefits (ethic, death)
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I admit, I am one of those who doesn't totally understand social security but I try really hard not to worry over much about it. What happens happens.
There ARE people out here who, although we are on social security, are still paying into it too. My piddly $530 month is certainly not enough to live on and, at my age, not many people want to hire me but I've been lucky enough to get part time. So I get my check every month and my paychecks show that I'm also still paying SS and Medicare. There are TONS of folks just like me out here. Doesn't that help a little??
I have paid into SS for 45 years so I always tried to look at it as a 'savings account'. I'd be totally ticked if someone took my 'savings account' and I never saw any of it back.
What these right wingers are trying to do is scare you into cutting the program.
SS is a huge success. It only has 1% Adminstrative costs. They don't like it because it refutes their ideology that says all Goverment is bad.
SS has a small long term deficit that could be corrected with a small payroll tax increase or if we do nothing it will still pay full benefits till 2040 where it will drop to 75% of benefits.
When your here these ignorant posters start talking about employee to retiree ratios or IOUs know that they have been brainwashed by right wing propaganda.
The system is or will shortly be taking in less than it pays out. This means that it has to cash in some of its assets to meet its obligations. These assets will run out in the 2040's and everybody from then on will only get 60%-75% of promised benefits. Unfortunately, these "assets" are U.S. government bonds. A government bond is when you give the government in question your money, they spend it, and they give you a piece of paper promising to pay you back later. In other words, the Social Security asset trust fund is stuffed full of IOU's. Where do you think the government is going to get the money to pay back all of those IOU's as it cashes them in? It will tax us or it will have to borrow even more money.
Tell Warren Buffet and Bill Gates that their treasury notes are worthless IOUs. In fact, one might say that you are grotesquely mischaracterizing what a t-bond is to make a point that otherwise would not be valid.
Treasury notes are supported by the "full faith and credit" of the USA. That means, as a matter of law, they have to be satisfied.
The bonds can be redeemed using current assets, by issuing more bonds, or by raising taxes. Big deal. It's unthinkable that the US would welch on its obligations. In fact the national debt relative to the nation's ability to pay is lower today than it was in the early 1950s making your hysterical claim of default even more unlikely.
I still don't see the crisis. You haven't made the case.
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So, I will pay into Social Security, I will also have to pay for all of the money that was looted out of the trust fund (almost like a second S.S. tax), and on top of that I will not get full benefits. My generation is going to get screwed and we will be left with nothing because of the baby boomers.
None of your hypotheticals is supported by the actuaries of SS. The benefits will be paid in full until 2085 or 2039 depending on the actuarial assumptions used.
Seeing as no one can tell what's going to happen in the economy in the next two weeks let alone next 20 years, I'd say you're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
We are taxing. We are borrowing. The World is still happy to buy US treasury notes. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change. The Federal Gvt will be taxing and borrowing long after you are gone...LOL
The rest of the world will stop buying them as our fiscal underpinnings come unglued because of an unmanageable debt.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
There may be a debate about where to cut spending, but if you think it will fall on Social Security retirees then you have another thing coming.
The entitlement programs constitute a massive portion of our federal budget and will only continue to increase in size. They are not sustainable under the current taxation and benefit rates.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
By all means have these 3rd Party kooks, teabaggers, and GOP lemmings just try and cut Social Security benefits....you'll be voted out of office so quick your head will spin.
You give a link that quite clearly details the serious future problems of the entitlement programs and the accompanying fiscal mess that will result and you blithely dismiss anybody who raises any concerns about it with such a pathetic and hackneyed string of insults? It is beyond my comprehension how you can be so daft.
The rest of the world will stop buying them as our fiscal underpinnings come unglued because of an unmanageable debt.
The entitlement programs constitute a massive portion of our federal budget and will only continue to increase in size. They are not sustainable under the current taxation and benefit rates.
You give a link that quite clearly details the serious future problems of the entitlement programs and the accompanying fiscal mess that will result and you blithely dismiss anybody who raises any concerns about it with such a pathetic and hackneyed string of insults? It is beyond my comprehension how you can be so daft.
The World will not stop buying them.....LOL
They would want the invest to go to zero????? Sure buddy!
Oh now you are on to all entitlements???
I thought the subject was Social Security??
Your scare tactics don't work there so you go off on a tangent.
I admit, I am one of those who doesn't totally understand social security but I try really hard not to worry over much about it. What happens happens.
There ARE people out here who, although we are on social security, are still paying into it too. My piddly $530 month is certainly not enough to live on and, at my age, not many people want to hire me but I've been lucky enough to get part time. So I get my check every month and my paychecks show that I'm also still paying SS and Medicare. There are TONS of folks just like me out here. Doesn't that help a little??
I have paid into SS for 45 years so I always tried to look at it as a 'savings account'. I'd be totally ticked if someone took my 'savings account' and I never saw any of it back.
It's worse that that...not only did you pay into the SS system...not only will your income tax be used to pay back your money that was "borrowed" from the SS trust fund. If you work while you receive SS benefits, there is a high likelyhood that you'll pay tax on that SS income.
What these right wingers are trying to do is scare you into cutting the program.
SS is a huge success. It only has 1% Adminstrative costs. They don't like it because it refutes their ideology that says all Goverment is bad.
That is absolutely false. While I am against income redistribution and governmental meddling in my life, that is not the basis for my concern. My growing alarm with the entitlement programs is because of the projected costs of them as released by the government. There will not be enough people paying into the system, there will be a lot of old people, and the costs of health care continually go up. The Congressional budget office (full of well-informed economists) quite clearly says that we are facing a very very serious problem in the coming decades with our ability to pay for all of this stuff. THE MONEY ISN'T THERE.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
SS has a small long term deficit that could be corrected with a small payroll tax increase or if we do nothing it will still pay full benefits till 2040 where it will drop to 75% of benefits.
Admittedly, Social Security could be tweaked to become solvent. Raising the retirement age a few years, increasing the payroll tax here and there, etc.. could take care of things. But, this does nothing to deal with the horror that Medicare and Medicaid will inflict upon us in the coming decades.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
When your here these ignorant posters start talking about employee to retiree ratios or IOUs know that they have been brainwashed by right wing propaganda.
It is beyond me how you can provide a link as evidence to support your viewpoint and that very link completely supports what I am saying.
Except....those those treasury notes that were issued to cover the money raided from SS will need to be repaid by the taxpayer, and are not on the current budget. They form a huge liability that will need to be repaid. If any private institutuion to pull a scame on this scale, it would be highly illegal. The only reason it's not a "Ponzi Shceme" and is legal is...because the government says it it. So, it's fraud at the least...
Private Institutions sell bonds all the time. The government's (unethical) borrowing against the bonds is not illegal. AS conservatives point out all the time, government is not private enterprise. The debt can be satisfied as needed by issuing more bonds.
The reason it is not a Ponzi scheme is b/c the beneficiaries are all getting real benefits. Ponzi schemes, by definition, screw 'investors' out of their return. And on a side note, SS is not an investment scheme designed to maximize wealth. It's social insurance utilizing the single safest investment in the country to maintain that security. From that vantage point alone the idea that SS is Ponzi scheme fails.
...The debt can be satisfied as needed by issuing more bonds...
I hope you don't handle your personal finances this way. What you are proposing is using one credit card to pay off another one, while never paying off either principle or interest, racking up ever increasing debt. Lots of people tried that in their personal life...and ended up bankrupt. Why would you expect better results when it's done on a larger scale?
The bonds can be redeemed using current assets, by issuing more bonds, or by raising taxes.
Exactly. The government has to get the money from somewhere in order to pay back those bonds. It will tax me or it will borrow more money. Also, I will not get full benefits anyway. But, I tell you what. I am willing to deal with getting doubled-taxed and not receiving full benefits if the old people give up Medicare in its current incarnation. That program is what will destroy this nation.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
It's unthinkable that the US would welch on its obligations.
Unthinkable? Every fiat currency in the history of mankind has decayed and been devalued. Take our massive federal debt and factor in the copious amounts of debt that is being added to it by the current administration and we face a stark fiscal future that our children will be saddled with.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
I still don't see the crisis. You haven't made the case.
Look up the cost projections on Medicare and Medicaid and then get back to me.
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Originally Posted by padcrasher
Seeing as no one can tell what's going to happen in the economy in the next two weeks let alone next 20 years, I'd say you're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
The top economists in this nation who are familiar with our budget realities think that it is much more than a mole hill.
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