What Would You Be Willing to Do to Save SS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"That's unlike a pyramid scheme, because in a pyramid scheme, there is no set of assumptions that will allow it to work forever. "

Uhhh, yeah. Hello! It's thus the very definition of a pyramid scheme.

Hello yourself. If you set payments in equal to payments out, a pyramid scheme only works when both are zero. If it's an insurance scheme, as social security is, then all you have to do is count payments in and set benefits to be no greater than that. That's how Metropolitan Life Insurance company has been in business since 1868.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are way down in the weeds. The thing is insolvent and you're arguing about mowing the lawn while the house is on fire.

It's not insolvent. When the trust fund runs out in 2034 or so, there will still be enough money to pay 75% of benefits forever. The trust fund was an add-on created by Ronald Reagan so he could kick the can down the road by raising taxes without cutting benefits while getting credit for being a fiscal conservative. But we should go back to what it was before, a pay-as-you-go system, just by balancing income and outflow. And I repeat if we DO NOTHING, there will be a 25% cut in benefits, but the system will last forever.

A) It's paying out more than it's taking in today.

B) Much of what's in the "trust fund" are IOUs, so the money isn't even there. It's been robbed for other things.

C) Medicare is even worse off that SS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are way down in the weeds. The thing is insolvent and you're arguing about mowing the lawn while the house is on fire.

It's not insolvent. When the trust fund runs out in 2034 or so, there will still be enough money to pay 75% of benefits forever. The trust fund was an add-on created by Ronald Reagan so he could kick the can down the road by raising taxes without cutting benefits while getting credit for being a fiscal conservative. But we should go back to what it was before, a pay-as-you-go system, just by balancing income and outflow. And I repeat if we DO NOTHING, there will be a 25% cut in benefits, but the system will last forever.

Well, a 25% cut wouldn't hurt the upper income retirees! but those who depend on SS for a significant portion if their retiree income (if not all of it) would really suffer. As it is, we have people trying to get by on $1000 a month. (Even if ones house is paid off, that's quite a struggle.)

[Anonymous]

Just fyi..full retirement for anyone born in 1960 or after is already 67. It might help to increase it to 68, but most people born after 1960 are in the "baby bust" generation anyhow. It's surviving the boomers that is going to test the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are way down in the weeds. The thing is insolvent and you're arguing about mowing the lawn while the house is on fire.

It's not insolvent. When the trust fund runs out in 2034 or so, there will still be enough money to pay 75% of benefits forever. The trust fund was an add-on created by Ronald Reagan so he could kick the can down the road by raising taxes without cutting benefits while getting credit for being a fiscal conservative. But we should go back to what it was before, a pay-as-you-go system, just by balancing income and outflow. And I repeat if we DO NOTHING, there will be a 25% cut in benefits, but the system will last forever.

A) It's paying out more than it's taking in today.

That was intended.

B) Much of what's in the "trust fund" are IOUs, so the money isn't even there. It's been robbed for other things.

That was not intended, but when Al Gore talked about putting that money a lock box, people thought that was pretty funny. I voted for Gore, so don't blame me.

C) Medicare is even worse off that SS.

Separate issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"That's unlike a pyramid scheme, because in a pyramid scheme, there is no set of assumptions that will allow it to work forever. "

Uhhh, yeah. Hello! It's thus the very definition of a pyramid scheme.

Hello yourself. If you set payments in equal to payments out, a pyramid scheme only works when both are zero. If it's an insurance scheme, as social security is, then all you have to do is count payments in and set benefits to be no greater than that. That's how Metropolitan Life Insurance company has been in business since 1868.

You can call it whatever you want. Insurance, tax, lollipops.

Bernie Madoff (madoff madeoff!) did the same thing and is now in jail.

You should look at the social security trustee reports sometime. It's not in the state you think it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"That's unlike a pyramid scheme, because in a pyramid scheme, there is no set of assumptions that will allow it to work forever. "

Uhhh, yeah. Hello! It's thus the very definition of a pyramid scheme.

Hello yourself. If you set payments in equal to payments out, a pyramid scheme only works when both are zero. If it's an insurance scheme, as social security is, then all you have to do is count payments in and set benefits to be no greater than that. That's how Metropolitan Life Insurance company has been in business since 1868.

You can call it whatever you want. Insurance, tax, lollipops.

Bernie Madoff (madoff madeoff!) did the same thing and is now in jail.

You should look at the social security trustee reports sometime. It's not in the state you think it is.

Since you don't know the difference between insurance, pyramid schemes and ponzi schemes, I suggest you cancel your homeowner's insurance and put all your money in a mattress. Preferably fireproof.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"To make all of Social Security solvent for the next 75 years would require the equivalent of any of the following: immediately raising the Social Security payroll tax rate to 14.98% from 12.4% on the first $118,500 of wages; cutting benefits by 16%; or some combination of the two."

In other words, raise the percentage close to where it was just a few years ago.

Also, where in this article do they reference that it runs dry because what's owed to the trust fund, over 2.7 trillion, has run out in combination with the amounts being added in each year.

Hold the phone. They CUT the percentage that earners pay in a few years ago? (Retirees forget these things.) if so, I doubt that was supposed to be permanent - sounds like something to put more money back in Americans pockets. So....yeah.....first thing would be to restore it. And the 2.5 percent is shared by employer and employee, so it's barely a 1% increase. Spread over 150 million workers it makes a big difference.

Let me correct myself. When I looked it showed it without the additional they add in for the medicare. I remembered them cutting it for a time but I will have to go back. I am self employed, pay the maximum at 15.3% and it doesn't separate it as fica and medicare. I am also paying additional medicare tax beyond the max.

Now, what I have been for is holding the employer contribution the same, lower incomes pay a smaller percentage and higher incomes pay more.

[Anonymous]

Point of clarification:

The Social Security Trust Fund is invested in U. S. Treasury Bonds, the same thing that investors treat as the world's safest investment.


http://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-understanding-the-social-security-trust-funds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"To make all of Social Security solvent for the next 75 years would require the equivalent of any of the following: immediately raising the Social Security payroll tax rate to 14.98% from 12.4% on the first $118,500 of wages; cutting benefits by 16%; or some combination of the two."

In other words, raise the percentage close to where it was just a few years ago.

Also, where in this article do they reference that it runs dry because what's owed to the trust fund, over 2.7 trillion, has run out in combination with the amounts being added in each year.

Hold the phone. They CUT the percentage that earners pay in a few years ago? (Retirees forget these things.) if so, I doubt that was supposed to be permanent - sounds like something to put more money back in Americans pockets. So....yeah.....first thing would be to restore it. And the 2.5 percent is shared by employer and employee, so it's barely a 1% increase. Spread over 150 million workers it makes a big difference.

Let me correct myself. When I looked it showed it without the additional they add in for the medicare. I remembered them cutting it for a time but I will have to go back. I am self employed, pay the maximum at 15.3% and it doesn't separate it as fica and medicare. I am also paying additional medicare tax beyond the max.

Now, what I have been for is holding the employer contribution the same, lower incomes pay a smaller percentage and higher incomes pay more.

Current social security tax rate is 12.4%, with 6.2% paid by employee and 6.2% paid by employer. In 2011 and 2012, the employee portion was cut to 4.2%. Medicare tax is 2.9%, with 1.45% paid by employee and 1.45% paid by employer. The additional medicare tax is on incomes over $250,000 for married couples and is 3.8%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like the damn thing to earn some interest somehow for starters. Right now, it's just a transfer payment from young to old.

I don't like a cap increase. Are you also going to do a payout increase? Of course not. This just proves how mathematically unsound it is. It's a pyramid scheme and at the end, the noobies are going to get screwed, b/c it won't be there for them.

Forget this uppermost brackets stuff. It isn't a welfare system and it was never meant to be. It's a retirment system.

Additionally, why is SSDI (disability) dipping into SS? Becuase everyone who collected 99 weeks of unemployment decided the next best route was to go onto disability for (unprovable) aches and pains. The system is being abused and people need to be told to FO.

Finally, I want Obama to return the close to $1 Trillion he took from medicare to fund Obamacare. Enough of this robbing peter to pay paul for votes crap.

This. At what point are we going to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul? The tax the rich mantra is getting old.

It's not a retirement system. It's a retirement insurance system.

and yet insurance doesn't charge the rich more simply because they are rich...so no SS isn't functioning as insurance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like the damn thing to earn some interest somehow for starters. Right now, it's just a transfer payment from young to old.

I don't like a cap increase. Are you also going to do a payout increase? Of course not. This just proves how mathematically unsound it is. It's a pyramid scheme and at the end, the noobies are going to get screwed, b/c it won't be there for them.

Forget this uppermost brackets stuff. It isn't a welfare system and it was never meant to be. It's a retirment system.

Additionally, why is SSDI (disability) dipping into SS? Becuase everyone who collected 99 weeks of unemployment decided the next best route was to go onto disability for (unprovable) aches and pains. The system is being abused and people need to be told to FO.

Finally, I want Obama to return the close to $1 Trillion he took from medicare to fund Obamacare. Enough of this robbing peter to pay paul for votes crap.

This. At what point are we going to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul? The tax the rich mantra is getting old.

It's not a retirement system. It's a retirement insurance system.

and yet insurance doesn't charge the rich more simply because they are rich...so no SS isn't functioning as insurance.

Neither does Social Security.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Point of clarification:

The Social Security Trust Fund is invested in U. S. Treasury Bonds, the same thing that investors treat as the world's safest investment.


http://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-understanding-the-social-security-trust-funds

This. If you don't trust government bonds, then you should dump all your savings bonds and any mutual funds that contain government bonds.

Like marketable government bonds, the bonds held by Social Security are legally backed by "the full faith and credit of the US government." This means that Congress would have to pass a special law to reverse this, so that Treasury would no longer redeem Treasury bonds held by Social Security when mature or presented. The chances of Congresspeople doing this to their senior constituents are zero. I'd add that this would also spook international financial markets and the US' many overseas creditors, but the geniuses in Congresses don't seem to care about that. So I'll stick to the point that they're all beholden to their senior constituents, who vote.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like the damn thing to earn some interest somehow for starters. Right now, it's just a transfer payment from young to old.

I don't like a cap increase. Are you also going to do a payout increase? Of course not. This just proves how mathematically unsound it is. It's a pyramid scheme and at the end, the noobies are going to get screwed, b/c it won't be there for them.

Forget this uppermost brackets stuff. It isn't a welfare system and it was never meant to be. It's a retirment system.

Additionally, why is SSDI (disability) dipping into SS? Becuase everyone who collected 99 weeks of unemployment decided the next best route was to go onto disability for (unprovable) aches and pains. The system is being abused and people need to be told to FO.

Finally, I want Obama to return the close to $1 Trillion he took from medicare to fund Obamacare. Enough of this robbing peter to pay paul for votes crap.

This. At what point are we going to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul? The tax the rich mantra is getting old.

It's not a retirement system. It's a retirement insurance system.

and yet insurance doesn't charge the rich more simply because they are rich...so no SS isn't functioning as insurance.

Neither does Social Security.

+1. The rich currently pay LESS than their housekeepers and lawn guys, because nobody pays the FICA tax on more than about $118,000. That's called a regressive tax. The proposal to raise the cap would just fix that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like the damn thing to earn some interest somehow for starters. Right now, it's just a transfer payment from young to old.

I don't like a cap increase. Are you also going to do a payout increase? Of course not. This just proves how mathematically unsound it is. It's a pyramid scheme and at the end, the noobies are going to get screwed, b/c it won't be there for them.

Forget this uppermost brackets stuff. It isn't a welfare system and it was never meant to be. It's a retirment system.

Additionally, why is SSDI (disability) dipping into SS? Becuase everyone who collected 99 weeks of unemployment decided the next best route was to go onto disability for (unprovable) aches and pains. The system is being abused and people need to be told to FO.

Finally, I want Obama to return the close to $1 Trillion he took from medicare to fund Obamacare. Enough of this robbing peter to pay paul for votes crap.

This. At what point are we going to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul? The tax the rich mantra is getting old.

It's not a retirement system. It's a retirement insurance system.

and yet insurance doesn't charge the rich more simply because they are rich...so no SS isn't functioning as insurance.

Um, that's not the definition of insurance. You can determine premium payments any way you want. You could set it up so that people with red hair pay more than people with blond hair. That doesn't mean it's not an insurance program.