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 ...
People at the end of the Ponzi scheme do take it in the shorts!
The very productive baby boomers are on the way out and being replaced by people derived from $h!tholes. What could possibly go wrong?
Adopt the Chilean model and make it optional
Actually from the beginning the social security law mandated that any additional funds collected through the social security tax had to go into the general fund and the social security trust fund was then given a special treasury bond.
What happened to that lock box Al Gore told us about years ago? Did our political geniuses take our money from that fund and use it to pay for illegal immigrants or some other pet project of theirs? I bet their pension fund is fully funded with our tax dollars.
Remember when President Bush wanted to give the people a choice? He was ridiculed by the left and by some in here.
ok didn’t know that!
I do remember it was considered “extraordinary (at least by some in the media!)” when Johnson “borrowed” from it.
But I guess he was borrowing from the “trust fund”!
I know that’s been pretty much SOP since then (or at last that’s what I have read in the conservative media!) when Uncle Sucker needs to pay for something “big”1
I would say that it has been debated, but the wistful assertion that a way to fund the program is a crappy defense of the program, and the solution of printing fiat money was always what it was going to come down to.
There is no solution.
It is inherently insolvent.
There are zero victims.
The voters have rejected plan after plan which would have privatized the system.
Those who will receive Nothing after paying in for years will deserve the nothing they will get.
Including me, and including you.
I have no valid defense, and neither do you.
I’m still nine years out from social security. I’ve never counted on it because I’ve always been told the coffers will be empty by then.
Good points. Yes, never underestimate Congress, they will bleed the producers of this Country dry.
I enlisted when I was 18 years old and I had already started calling SS a Ponzi Scheme (I read a lot when I was young). I started to do what little saving I could back then because I have never believed SS would be solvent by the time I retired.
I do worry that the Government may become so broke that they will try to cut our military retirement. There are so many people out there that think it is some kind of gravy train that Congress could possibly get away with it.
I have done enough saving to make myself quite comfortable as long as I keep my military retirement. If that goes away I will live but it will have to be in a very frugal manor and I do not want to work until the day I die. I want a few good years to do all the hunting, fishing, and traveling that I missed having to perform my duties in uniform.
I see social security as a welfare program to ensure seniors don’t starve to death. I see it as a tax. I support a means test if your income is above a certain level you don’t get SS.
I also support IRA accounts and no government SS. Individual responsibility. Let the welfare program take care of those who can’t make it and shut down SS.
For the first few decades so much cash was coming in and so little going out the politicians bought votes by adding a laundry list of things that would get paid out of SS.
It should NEVER have been used for disabilities and all the other things. Then the Government went ahead and allowed illegals and brand new citizens to collect SS even though they have never paid in to the system.
Social Security should only be paid out as a supplement for retirement and then only to those who paid in.
Remember this ad?
I agree.
Right now I’d settle for a citizenship test.
We may have one, but in California I’d be crazy if I said we were enforcing it.
My wife and I are self-employed. That means we get the privilege of paying both ends of the Social Security and Medicare taxes. Oh boy, we cannot tell you how happy we are to be paying into basically an soon-to-be insolvent ponzi scheme.
they are zombies who can’t function in society and they leech off the taxpayers for decades
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
Ray Charles could ‘see’ this coming when way back when, the GOVT declared druggies and drunks as suffering from illnessses not behavioral problems.
That cleared the way for common drunks and druggies to get disability money, which sort of led to the ADD crowd, another way to get money off the taxpayers with the full support of the Govt.
Also, put em on SSD and you can keep the ‘welfare rolls’ down...BUT along came BO and the welfare rolls grew and grew along with all kinds of freebies which were then extended to the illegal community.
ALL UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE OF THE US GOVT!!
Never have the words “I am from the government and here to help’ been more prolific.
Before reducing the little money seniors get from SS and before raising taxes on workers, get rid of SSDI !!!!!!! It is not social security but welfare. Move it to the general fund or don’t have it at all.
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