Posted on 10/01/2024 8:49:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It has been more than 40 years since Congress found common ground on Social Security and implemented a series of necessary reforms. Over that time, the discussion of Social Security has devolved into a shouting match, an exchange of emotionally charged hyperbole in which sound bites have become more important than stone cold facts.
This environment is great for politicians who wish to duck and weave the issue with impunity, less so for the rest of us, because nothing gets done and the problem gets worse. Voters need to think about the role they play in the do-nothing politics of Washington, D.C.
Social Security is the most predictable crisis in human history. We have talked about benefit cuts in the mid-2030s for years. As a result of all the talk and no action, about half of Americans 80-years-old today will outlive the system’s ability to pay scheduled benefits. In fact, nearly half of these people will live long enough to see Social Security serve as their sole source of income.
The unplanned reductions of benefits pose a significant problem, and policymakers should be on top of such a gloomy prospect. Unfortunately, the goal of politics at the moment isn’t to solve this enormous issue, one threatening to touch every American family in some way, shape, or form.
The point of modern politics is to get individuals to believe sufficiently in the merit of prospective policy solutions so that Americans are willing to share their belief on social media with their network of other voters. Every time they share content from a politician with their community, the information comes with the imprimatur of trust. We the people are the Walter Cronkite of the internet age.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
the USUAL response to the claim that Social Security will go bankrupt is an endless series of “fact checks” assuring readers that Social Security can’t go bankrupt. The financial troubles of the program are magically transformed into a strawman argument to do nothing: you shouldn’t worry about Social Security because it will still pay benefits — no matter what.
I am never sure what the journalists and would-be policy wonks mean by worst-case scenario. For those who depend upon Social Security, the worst-case scenario is not being able to afford the bare necessities.
While that possibility may not materialize in the near future, it would be substantially worse than getting a check reduced by 20 percent. Actually, the likelihood of beneficiaries receiving 80 percent of their promised benefits in 2033 is basically a coin flip.
Retirees today have been warned about this prospect for roughly 30 years. As time has passed, our elected officials have bickered over what to call insolvency, while doing little to prevent it.
Lock Box???!!!
With the election 30 days out, it might be a perfect time for Republicans to introduce social security legislation.
With all the mamas and papas wading the Rio Grande with the kids “for a better life” loaded with Social Security checks, food stamps, free money and Medicare as well as Medicaid, everything is going to go broke. America now has between 40 and 50 million illegals at the government teat and they’re still coming.
There are at least three fundamental perspectives on this matter.
One is the way regular people see it—as a source of retirement income.
Then there’s the perspective of government bureaucrats and hard core leftists—that the people are lucky the government is so kind to give them such a thing as social security.
The third view is that of the high level bankers and fellow members of their club—that social security is a cover which allows them to steal from the people while appearing to be giving them something.
I predict all promised benefits will be paid, BUT, and this is a big but, politicians in the next decade will add to deficit spending and trigger inflation, to have money to pay these benefits.
And I expect politicians in the 2030s, in both parties, will go along with inflation to pay benefits, because the political fallout from actually trimming back benefit payments will be unthinkable.
It can run out of enough money to meet its obligations, but it can't go bankrupt.
SS can go bankrupt but its just a number. It means nothing. They can go in the read like every other federal ledger. SS going bankrupt is just a scary headline. It means nothing. The federal government has been bankrupt for a century.
It can indeed go bankrupt. Its quite obvious - in the next few years, Social Securities liabilities will most definitely exceed its assets
BUT - its merely a separate pocket and accounting distinction of Fed.gov.
Money (debt) will be taken from one pocket of Fed.gov, to pay off the other Social Security pocket
My response to this whole thing is along the lines of what I said to my classmates in high school (1971) when they asked, what if the government refuses to honor your US savings bonds when you try to cash them in. To wit:
If the government refuses to pay out your face value of your savings bonds when you ask, we will be living in a world where that will be the least of your problems.
I still stand by that statement. This falls in the category of “desperate times call for desperate measures. I’d be worried more about the desperate times I’m living in that incentivizes the desperate measures, rather than the government’s desperate measures regarding SS.
From what I recall. People receiving SS today, are getting via people working today. There was never a lockbox. Smarter FReepers, please let me know if this is incorrect.
No politician will let that happen. It is too much of a hot potato.
If an entity has no liabilities it cannot go bankrupt. SS as the SC has ruled at least a couple of times has no legal obligations beyond whatever Congress decides upon and those laws being changeable at anytime.
SS is what it was intended to be. A wealth transfer scheme that takes from today’s workers and gives to today’s recipients. Its goal of building a government welfare dependent voting class is well met. It has no obligations beyond those imposed by our political system.
It’s not earned, it is not an intergenerational sacred obligation, any claims as to assets and liabilities let alone a lockbox are mere political accounting fictions. Despite having 13% of your earnings confiscated you are owed nothing.
The day SS buys less votes then some other scheme it will be defunded.
The payments to today’s and tomorrow’s recipients is simply a function the political power they are able to muster and exercise through taxation and spending.
No more SSI taxes over $140k-somewhere thereabouts. So the rat idea is to raise it up on the rich. What else CAN they do? I would steal the estates of dead folks provided the program ends when all recipients over age 42(millennials) are dead. Between now and then everyone has a 10% payroll tax going to a Roth IRA. No withdrawals. Red ink gets made up from the general fund. Legalize suicide-who’s body is it?
Technically, there is a lockbox. The SS fund has money, in fact it's one of the largest owners of U.S. debt (U.S. treasuries). Basically, most of the debt our government owes is to ourselves (SS fund and Federal Reserve bank, with the Fed owning more debt than the SS fund for a while, but I believe with the Fed now lowering its balance sheet we're back to the SS fund being the largest owner of U.S. debt). So the SS fund has monetary assets.
However, it's also true that current SS payouts depend on people working today. How is that possible? Because the SS system is a large ponzi scheme in which the promised payouts per person is more than the money coming in per person. It was originally designed on the assumption that couples would keep having lots of kids. Thus, lots more future workers would always be putting in more than the retired workers were taking out, even with each retired worker taking out more than he put in. If that's not an example of a ponzi scheme I don't know what is.
That changed when the left pushed their "population bomb" theory and the big push for everybody to reduce the number of kids they make. Now the SS fund will run out of money paying out more per person than it takes in per person, without many young workers filling in the gap. Also, part of the problem is that, by law, the SS fund managers can invest in only one thing: U.S. treasuries. They can't invest part of the money in a simple S&P 500 index mutual fund or anything like that.
Another poster on this thread already said it. They will just find another pocket to get the money to cover SS.
It’s been that way for DECADES.
The baby boomer numbers with smaller workforce is the issue - have to steal more from workers to pay off the retirees. SS is just a grand Ponzi scheme.
People worried about SS should be worried about the govt finally deciding to directly raid the massive private retirement investments.
When they are sending billions to Ukraine, don’t tell me you can’t fund Social Security.
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