Posted on 01/21/2018 9:46:42 AM PST by Kaslin
Social Security is, barring an immediate and massive overhaul in how benefits are paid to the back-end of the Baby Boomer generation and beyond, on its deathbed. There can be no mistaking that fact.
Veronique de Rugy explains at Reason:
Since 2010, [Social Security] has been running at a cash-flow deficit – meaning that the Social Security payroll taxes the government collects aren't enough to cover the benefits it's obliged to pay out. That should have been a signal that the time had come to look at reform.
Instead, we've spent the last seven years ignoring the problem. To get by, the program started tapping into assets set aside beginning in the 1980s for rainy days. Prior to 2010, the program collected more in payroll taxes than was needed to collect benefits at the time. The leftovers were "invested" in Treasury bonds through the Old-Age Trust Fund, which is now being drawn down.
The 2010 mark for this cash-flow deficit didn't occur willy-nilly. It could be argued that our government hastened, or at the very least exacerbated, this cash-flow deficit with its "payroll tax holiday," a bipartisan effort instituted in late 2009 that persisted until 2013. This political maneuver slashed payroll taxes by roughly one third, from 6.2% to 4.2%. The uncollected 2% (not peanuts in a country the size of ours) happens to coincide with the moment in time in which the government's payroll tax receipts couldn't cover its Social Security liabilities. The cost of this "payroll tax holiday" is estimated to be $240 billion in tax revenue, some of which, at least, would have otherwise gone to pay out Social Security's beneficiaries. Much of this $240 billion in uncollected revenue necessarily became issued federal debt.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
But-but-but there are all these interest-free loans made from the “segregated” Social Security Trust Fund to the US Treasury, to make up for deficit spending in past years....
We pay a tax for Social Security. That money needs to be put in an interest bareing account and used only for Social Security.
If those benefuts are cut off from the next generation there will be a huge class action lawsuit to get all that money back they took from us. It is considered a contract.
Look at the number of people not working, and then consider that they weren’t paying into social security.
Who knew?
Watch what happens to these numbers in Trump’s first term alone, and then the second.
Things will look better. Don’t go wobbly on us!
As for Social Security and Medicare, they should both be put in the road to privatization. We can do that without wetting ourselves unnecessarily.
I’m sure this was echoing in the halls of 0bama’s White House: “Most of those who collect Soc Sec retirement benefits are white, so scroo ‘em.”
Looks like someone picked the lock on the lock box.
I knew this was coming.... sad thing is I was just showing my wife yesterday that between my SSA and GE pension we would have enough to live on if I could just work the next 20 years till I was 70. Without our IRA/401K and savings.
Now I suspect, based on recent news, that my GE pension will go to 0 and my SSA will be cut in half at the least.
Seems the people that lay things up and actually plan for the future are always the ones that catch the short end of the stick when it comes around.
“We pay a tax for Social Security. That money needs to be put in an interest bareing account and used only for Social Security.”
It already is - in US Treasuries!
BTW, ‘Angels27’ - anything to do with Mike Trout or just coincidence?
Money borrowed from Social Security helped pay for Bush’s Iraq war. And Obama’s war against Libya.
That honestly doesn’t help.
Just like the looming issue with 401K’s, when a larger amount of money is being taken out of the accounts than going in, the accounts won’t perform well.
Unless you mean true savings accounts, which would be a net loss of value with inflation.
Unfortunately, that money was spent on all sorts of things, and is gone.
If you supported Bush’s inasion of Iraq, you can’t complain about the Social Security fund running low. The trillion dollars for Iraq war came in part from “borrowing” Social Security taxes
1. Class warfare will be used saying that if you make a certain amount from non SS funds, you will no longer be entitled to full SS benefits. “You don't need the money!”
2. Usually the 1st Government Employee group to be screwed is the Military. So as with 1, there will be a decrease in SS benefits based on your Military retirement income. And since the military predominately votes Republican we will be a prime Democrat target.
“As for Social Security and Medicare, they should both be put in the road to privatization.”
Can you imagine what would happen if the 14 or 15% that now goes to SS would go directly to the workers AND what would happen if somehow Pension Plan type Insurance were allowed? We sort of call that an annuity.
Think of it, the 5+5% employee and employer PLUS the 6+6% current social security “contribution” all put into a retirement savings account. The amount is about right to secure retirements.
It needs to be privatized for the younger workers, and older ones soon to retire or already retired stay on the present system.
I am now at retirement age myself if I so choose. I wish they would have implemented Bush’s proposed plan. Under that plan, the younger ones would end up with more in the long run, and the money would go to their heirs if they died before they retire. I would be getting more than I will be when I retire in 3 years at full retirement age.
Stupid democrats screwed us with the “Bush want’s to shove grandma over a cliff” lie.
I am a Military retiree. I planned my upcoming retirement without Social Security because I figured it would be gone, but now I fear the Government may reduce my Military retirement pay.
A good start would be to go over all the SSD claims.
Gets pretty bad when OUR GOVERNMENT supports a disability claim from someone that has been drawing unemployment for xx # of years then gets to claim SSD because he is suffering from low esteem from being on unemployment.
Second good thing is to cut the lawyers in half (figuratively & Literally) and also make them stop advertising on daytime TV.
They, like the Pharm Companies, dangle all these ‘products’ and put ideas into the couch potatoes heads that just make both ‘industries’ more money.
No kidding, I would ideally like to defer til 70 but it makes me want to take whatever I can get when I turn 62 in 5 years. AND, they will probably find some way to punish savers and means-test it to death. “Oh, you planned and saved, no SS for you!”
Admittedly the program was started to avert poverty in old age, but the practice of giving it to everybody who’s worked enough years is well established.
Yes, lawyers/Pharm support people who get all drugged up on 10 different meds for chronic pain or psych issues like depression, then viola, they are zombies who can’t function in society and they leech off the taxpayers for decades.
Then they room together with similar people with SSI, EBT, child support payments, whatever and all of a sudden they have a 6-figure lifestyle all on the taxpayers’ dime. And they wear it like a badge of honor.
I’ve been been hearing it for a out 35 years.
That’s a lie. As a matter of fact, its ALL a lie. Bush’s war didn’t spend nearly as much as government largesse to the third world and the non-working classes. The money was spent... That much is true, but it had to be stolen first.
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