Reply to What Would You Be Willing to Do to Save SS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The SS funding mechanism is a total mess. SS is so much more expensive than anybody ever anticipated and I really doubt it would have made it past congress if anybody would have had an inkling about what SS taxes would have turned into.

Hell, people in this thread basically abandon any pretense about SS being anything other than a welfare program. The reality is that every 10-15 years SS needs some massive patch that amazingly (!) always involves more revenue from higher taxes.

Rather than be humbled by its incompetence in predicting future demographic trends and its inability to design a sustainable program, the political left just doubles down and wants even more money for the program.

Since 1970 alone, SS revenue and benefits have spiked from below 3% of yearly GDP to 5%. I'm sure this thing looks even worse if you track back to inception.  Data suggests SS cost 2.2% of GDP in 1960.

[/quote]

Huh? Nobody here has "abandoned any pretense" about it being a welfare program. In fact several of us have argued that it's *not* welfare and gave clear reasons why not. Either you didn't read those comments or it serves your purpose to make things up.

Yep the program has gotten bigger. It's driven by population growth and population aging. More workers are paying in, the average age of the population has increased, and the share of the population that's retired is much larger because of the boomers. None of this is the program's fault--it's providing security to many more retirees. Expenses as a share of GDP will level out in the early 2020s as the youngest boomers retire. [/quote]

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