I sure am happy that I will not be highly reliant on SS dollars.
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21 comments:
As someone who has talked constantly, and really obsessively, to the point where people flee from me at parties, I might suggest here that the idea that incentives motivate people, seems at best unclear. I have seen people refuse years worth of free money on their retirement plans because it means giving up the extra foam on their Starbucks order.
Lots of problems in life are hard. More than a few of them are unsolvable. The cost of health care is an utterly hopeless mess. Social Security is not among them. The problems have always been well understood. The actuarial tables are both true and inexorable. We know for a fact that we can now as we have in the past deal with the problems of SS, and the sooner we deal with them, the easier the burden. Wasn't that incentive enough to address the issues?===Hiram
I hate the practice of connecting unconnected issues like if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we get a good bagel in the Twin Cites. But there are times I an resist. Our president, on a whim, just added two hundred billion dollars to your tax burdens, and that's coupled with a huge and quite possibly permanent increase in energy prices. So why can't he deal with the vastly simpler problems of Social Security, something that will not cost the life of one single American? Where's the whim for that?==Hiram
As long many American citizens think they can live large now and have someone else pay the bill later, I guess they will live for today... :-( Thank God there are jobs for old broke people...
Personally I am tired of blaming the politicians... The reality is that the American citizens are just greedy and selfish... And they vote that way.
I am tired of people not blaming politicians. I am particularly tired whose working lives are dedicated to developing complex strategies for avoiding blame for their decisions. The problems of Social Security have not been solved because politicians whose job it is to know better, have not solved them.--Hiram
The people choose the politicians... And the people are not voting for a balanced budget and responsible governance... They are voting for tax cuts and more handouts...
People who voted for Trump voted for an isolated America. They wanted walls, and tariffs and barriers to voting. Does that mean they were voting for budget deficits. Trump lied to them, but did he deceive them? Trump campaigned against inflation, and just about all his policies contribute to inflation. That has always been obvious to me. Has it not been obvious to everyone?==Hiram
Unfortunately I have come to the conclusion that many voters are uninformed idiots... And having to choose between 2 bad choices sure does not help them...
Trump has been bad in many ways, however I can not honestly say the Harris would not have been just as bad in different ways... :-(
As someone who has been immersed in politics and law pretty much all of my life, I am often surprised at what voters don't know, at least in terms of the specifics of how government worka according to law and practice. Social Security is an example of that. People don't know how ,works on the most basic level. It's simple, but it's also original. Nothing else is like it and it was designed to do totally different things than it it does today. But one of the fascinating things to me is how well it works. For example, SS is often called a "Ponzi Scheme", always by people who don't understand either SS or Ponzi Schemes. One feature of Ponzi Schemes is that they don't last. Ever. That's because the fraud expands exponentially. They always crash and burden, and they never last. If SS is a Ponzi Scheme why has it lasted 90 years?==Hiram
Agreed... It will be interesting to see if they find another funding source or if they cut the benefits... :-O
As the mythical social security trust fund mythically runs out, pressure will increase on elected representatives fo focus on the problem. I don't worry about sources a lot. This is a promise government has made, I don't care which of their many pockets out of which they find the money.--Hiram
Nothing mythical about the trust funds...
SS trust funds are used to purchase federal securities. What that amounts to, is the federal government moving money from one federal account to another federal government account. It is an exercise in bookkeeping not investment. Both are valuable because of the underlying promise to pay which is exactly the same with both.--Hiram
Basic to the notion of a trust fund is that money from one party has been entrusted to another party. What the government does with regard to SS money is entrust the money to itself.==Hiram
We will have to agree to disagree... To me a Trust is a legal entity with well defined reciepts, rules and outflows.
So what other pocket do you think they should steal from to keep the trust / system able to pay out 100%?
What distinguishes a trust as a legal entity is, for lack of a better word, trust. One person trusts another person to manage assets. That doesn't mean trusts can't be abused. It can happen where the trustor, doesn't really turn over control to the trustee, that the arrangement is a sham.
I am not saying here, at least, that there should be a different arrangement, that they should find someone with different pants to take from. What I am saying is that the characterization that is employed is deceptive or at least misleading. Social Security is a system of promises between the generations. It has worked because the promises have been kept. Will we continue to keep them?--Hiram
I personally think breaking them is the best answer... The people and politicians my age and older have known the system needed adjustment for 20+ years... And yet they just kept accepting their "too big" checks while not raising the funding methodology...
The irresponsible older folks have already over borrowed and under paid for decades. And now those same greedy old folks want to burden the young with their welfare payments?
What happened to personal responsibility in this country. :-O
The Social Security contribution to the national debt as represented by he famous trust fund is unimaginably huge. But that money has already been borrowed. It exists in the form of government securities which have never been dishonored, which in fact define security. Right now, since SS outflows exceed inflows, Social Security checks reduce, not increase the national debt.
We do have broader problems , less easily solved. Ironically, one could argue that the election of President Trump was intended to solve those problems. Candidate Trump made promises that could be construed as having a positive impact on our deficit issues. Trump wanted to put America first, in particular reduce out commitment to NATO and global security generally. Big bucks can be saved if we do that, Is that happening? Or are government costs increasing, directly through taxation or incurred debt, or indirectly with the rising energy prices. We didn't vote for that. Must we be punished for the fact that it happened? Will the puinshment be the breaking of promises to the elderly?==Hiram
Wrong... Since all the money is borrowed, the DEBT really should not change... As the SS / Medicare Bonds are sold for money to pay benefits... More bonds need to be sold to other entities to pay for those transactions.
Those who vote will take what they want, just as we older people have for decades... We drove up the DEBT and Promised ourselves big payments. It will be interesting to see how much the younger generations are willing to pay to keep their free loading elders comfortable....
Most Social Security money isn't borrowed. Most of the money that comes into the system is immediately paid out. Money was being borrowed when inflows to the system exceeded the outflows. That is what was happening for many years but isn't happening now. More broadly, one could make the case that borrowing money to pay SS bonds, we are not using the opportunity that Social Security provides us to reduce the debt. But we make a lot of decisions like that. The obvious way to reduce debt isn't by defaulting on our promises to America's seniors, it is to reduce the role we have allocated to ourselves of being America's policmen. Many people thought they were doing that when they voted for and elected President Trump. That isn't happening, but don't blame old people for that.==Hiram
There are many reasons we are spending ~2 TRILLION more than we are paying in. Remember that I am okay with raising taxes and cutting spending.
And yes the old folks are responsible that the trust funds were NOT fully funded for the expected payouts. I mean they have known about it for decades and done nothing... :-O They just kept voting for politicians who would ignore the looming disaster...
Imagine running an insurance company that did not keep enough investments available to pay claims? Or did not charge enough in premiums to pay the expected and agreed to claims. :-O
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