Social Security to run out in 17 years

[MiniCraque]

It's always funny when people try to pull this. Your inability to grasp the issue is *worse* if you claim to have credentials that would create a reasonable expectation that you could grasp it.



The program is funded through a dedicated tax. The tax overcollects, and then the surplus is invested in bonds. So it's not funded by any kind of trick; it's funded by tax collections. And, as it overcollects, future funding comes from future gov't obligations. This is a standard debt contract.

I've already said you can look at SS tax collections and payments as part of the general fund, but then there's no SS-specific shortfall (and legally, that's not how it works--there is a real legal issue if the trust fund runs out). How could there be?

Anyway, couldn't SS be restructured in a way that allowed deficits to be permanently covered by the federal budget? I realize that's a slippery slope, but that's the way retirement benefits work in most places around the world, and most of those are not Greece (before anyone tries to pull that example). If shortages start to creep up because of demographic changes, just raise the requirements as appropriate so the system balances itself once again. At least then retirees don't get screwed out of part of the money they theoretically became entitled to and the "SS is a Ponzi scheme" people can shut the fuck up forever and managing it becomes just another part of managing the budget, much like Medicare.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Anyway, couldn't SS be restructured in a way that allowed deficits to be permanently covered by the federal budget? I realize that's a slippery slope, but that's the way retirement benefits work in most places around the world, and most of those are not Greece (before anyone tries to pull that example). If shortages start to creep up because of demographic changes, just raise the requirements as appropriate so the system balances itself once again. At least then retirees don't get screwed out of part of the money they theoretically became entitled to and the "SS is a Ponzi scheme" people can shut the fuck up forever and managing it becomes just another part of managing the budget, much like Medicare.

Medicare is also kind of complicated. But, yeah, it would require a law change, but SS could just be another expense. For political reasons, there was bipartisan agreement that it should be self-sustaining. People feel like they're just getting what they put in, and people who normally oppose any safety-net spending support SS because of that (note how Breitbart presents the gov't as having "raided" SS to pay for welfare).

 

[Deleted member 159002]

Medicare is also kind of complicated. But, yeah, it would require a law change, but SS could just be another expense. For political reasons, there was bipartisan agreement that it should be self-sustaining. People feel like they're just getting what they put in, and people who normally oppose any safety-net spending support SS because of that (note how Breitbart presents the gov't as having "raided" SS to pay for welfare).

Keep government away from my SS!

 

[Toastytoy]

That's OK scrap the whole thing, i dont need the governments money i can save my own.

 

[dembones22]

What are they supposed to do though? They cant work forever?

Hurry up and die already !! IMO.

Let the living live !!

 

[Starman]

Good fucking luck.

He argued with me for 5 pages in another thread that Earned Income Credit "only results in people keeping more of what they earned" - arrogantly insisting that it is a deduction, rather than a paid credit. I literally cannot understand how someone could be so wrong, but continue to insist that they are correct.

Don't be dishonest. That wasn't the argument. You said the EIC was a subsidy. I said it was a tax break, and even if it did result in a family receiving more money from the government than they paid in taxes (which you didn't provide evidence of), it still wouldn't be classified as a subsidy.