When I said in the other thread that Haley could be a formidable candidate if she got to the general. I’m changing my mind on that.
And how would you keep it solvent while those who “have been stolen from” are still being paid? It seems like you would have to keep on finding it to keep it solvent so your phase out would end up being indefinte.
No offense but you have bad judgement lol. You thought the same about DeSantis winning the primary lol
it’s a little early to claim bad judgment over something that hasn’t happened. I stand by my bet and we’ll see what happens.
Those who couldn't afford their own care would need to depend on the kindness of others in one form or another. There would be clinics set up by charities and generous doctors, like many American doctors participate in internationally. There would be those who choose to provide funds for those in need. One obvious answer would be for people to create their own insurance pool if they like that could have 10s or 100s of millions of members, driving down costs in the same way that employer provided insurance does. Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2022 (ssa.gov) Social Security expenditures outpaced inputs by $50 billion. The trust fund bonds contributed 6% of the insufficient revenue. No money could be invested, because expenditures were greater than revenue. Also, the special treasury bonds have yields of about 2-3%, making them a terrible investment. If you had your money at an investment firm that got you a 3% yield, you would fire them. Unfortunately, this is the one money manager you are forced to use by law, so you are completely unable to fire them. Yes, it appears that just like a Ponzi scheme, social security is entirely dependent on new "investment" to pay out the earlier "investors." Two options. One, you would lower the amount taken over time, each retiree would over time thus have less and less taken from them, and then as a result have less and less required to pay them out. The general fund would pay for shortfalls with cuts in other areas to move funds to that purpose, ultimately retiring the debt over a period of time. Option two, you just stop collecting FICA immediately. Everyone is in whatever their current position is with regard to Social Security investment. All benefits are paid from the general fund (again, there are cuts to other areas to pay for the social security benefits which would naturally decrease over time). The only way the phase out would be indefinite would be if you kept collecting FICA at current rates.
I thought we already had the wonderful gofund medical plan in the US. Wonderful plans &ideas moniker!!
Third Option: Deal with it. "shortfalls" are made up from "general revenue". Shortfalls in general revenue can be made up with taxes (be they FICA or not) and/or reduction in across the board expenditures and/or Just Do Nothing (central and only plank in the R party). Debating about SS has always been mind numbingly stupid. We have to pretend that FICA payments go into a special fund (aka The Lock Box) which does not exist except on paper. We have to pretend that SS checks are written against this special fund; they are not. And we have to pretend that surpluses in this special fund are "invested" into t-bills, which they most certainly are not. It is all accounting tricks. FICA payroll deductions go into the general fund. SS checks for retirees are written against the general fund. Period. Thus, there is not a special fund that will run out of money in 2030 (or some such). The Rs want to push this "SS is Bankrupt" dribble, since they want to take SS out back and kill it. The Ds likewise push the "SS funds live in a Lock Box" dribble, so that retirees will not freak the **** out. Given that both sides are driven to lie about SS, we can not have an honest conversation wrt SS. The worst of all worlds is that Brain ****ing Dead Idiots want to solve the non-problem of SS solvency by privatizing SS. All this is a great-big-o sloppy wet kiss to the Financial Services Industry, whose misadventures brought us the The Great Recession of 2008. If SS is privatized, this will only bring the innocent who are financially ignorant and uneducated to the knives of the Financial Services Industry. A proverbial slaughter. This will only guarantee that the federal government will have to step in and save the retirees from themselves. In effect, the federal government would end up spending $2+ for every $1 of SS checks. The only world where this makes sense is in the minds of lobbyists.
Depending on the kindness of others. Ok fine you would have throngs of elderly dying from no healthcare access because there wouldn’t nearly be enough altruistic doctors, and private donors to cover the medical care, drugs and nursing home care necessary. If you think all the millions of seniors joining one pool would drive down costs you have no inkling how insurance pools work. The main reason there was the push for the insurance mandate is because without young healthy people paying in premiums without having claims the costs of insurance skyrockets. Elderly patients require more expensive healthcare. Having them all in one private pool without government subsidy and without young people to balance them would be a disaster. This isn’t rocket science this is a widely understood and accepted issue with healthcare insurance pools.
If you have a pool of hundreds of millions you basically have an entity that is operating on scale with the US government. Essentially government by another name. Anyway can you cite a country that doesn’t have Medicare or an equivalent that actually has better healthcare outcomes than the US currently? Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2022 (ssa.gov) Social Security expenditures outpaced inputs by $50 billion. The trust fund bonds contributed 6% of the insufficient revenue. No money could be invested, because expenditures were greater than revenue. Also, the special treasury bonds have yields of about 2-3%, making them a terrible investment. If you had your money at an investment firm that got you a 3% yield, you would fire them. Unfortunately, this is the one money manager you are forced to use by law, so you are completely unable to fire them. Yes, it appears that just like a Ponzi scheme, social security is entirely dependent on new "investment" to pay out the earlier "investors." Two options. One, you would lower the amount taken over time, each retiree would over time thus have less and less taken from them, and then as a result have less and less required to pay them out. The general fund would pay for shortfalls with cuts in other areas to move funds to that purpose, ultimately retiring the debt over a period of time. Option two, you just stop collecting FICA immediately. Everyone is in whatever their current position is with regard to Social Security investment. All benefits are paid from the general fund (again, there are cuts to other areas to pay for the social security benefits which would naturally decrease over time). The only way the phase out would be indefinite would be if you kept collecting FICA at current rates.[/QUOTE] Except as you noted above Social Security did have a shortfall so already it has to be made up by general revenue. If you’re going to cut current funding then it’s going. To be very difficult to provide the same level of output, other than massive deficit spending which I don’t think your for. With your first option you’ve framed this as paying what is owed for what you say is “stolen”. If you’re going to cut benefits and collect fewer revenue how is that given fair return to those who you say have been stolen from? Aren’t you then compounding what you call theft by gradually reducing benefits to people who have previously paid in?
Good post and I agree there are problems with entitlements and they both sides play politics with it. We really should be looking at things like increasing the retirement age and how we handle payroll taxes to keep the funds financially solvent but this issue is so politically toxic it is hard to have an actual straightforward conversation about it.
No. You are paying the full amount to current retirees. As you cut the FICA taxes, future retirees will have put in less, so when they retire, they have had less stolen from them, so there is less to pay out. Over a long time scale, this eventually drops to zero in and zero out. For example, if you lower FICA by 2.5% of it's current rate per year, someone who is 64 now would retire having paid slightly less than what he would have otherwise paid (one year of paying 2.5% less). In 40 years, FICA would be zero, so someone 25 now would have paid less and less each year and in their last year would be paying only 2.5% of the current rate. They would retire at half the current benefit (because on a linear decline like that, the average payment is half). Someone entering the workforce in 40 years would never pay any FICA, and so would retire with zero SS benefit. Both the revenue and the payouts would decrease gradually. Shortfalls would be made up by the general fund, as they are now (preferably paid for by cuts to other spending, such as defense). Eventually there would be no people left who ever paid into FICA, so there would be no benefits to pay out.
So your answer is to just rely on the general fund to pay for the shortfalls and would you then be fine using deficit spending to do so? If not do you think enough can be cut from the budget to pay for Social Security when we’re collecting less and less money FICA?
invariably, the willfully ignorant one ends up contradicting himself. his baseless (willfully ignorant) claim after being informed that the willfull ignorant one goes on to contradict his baseless claim (no earnings come from investment)
Yes. Let's force seniors to work later in their life! First world capitalism! People always seem to magically forget that American worker productivity is at historic highs while pay hasn't kept up the slightest. Instead of raising the retirement age why can't we just reverse the three TRILLION dollar tax cuts that bush+trump passed?! There's PLENTY of avenues for raising income without hurting American workers. What a disgusting world we live in which corporate stock buybacks are literally at historic highs and we have no idea how to raise income. We still have 500 BILLION dollars that we can raise RIGHT NOW if we just allow Medicare to fully negotiate prescription drugs.
No, you don't borrow to pay social security benefits. It would be part of a program that cuts deep into other areas of federal spending (such as defense and medicaid). Those aren't contradictory claims. The outlays are more than the income, so the very small amount (6%) paid for by prior investment is essentially meaningless. 94% is being paid out of money being taken now from taxpayers. No money is now being invested in the special treasury bonds. That is a fig leaf to cover up the ponzi scheme like nature of Social Security. The prior investments would provide negligible benefits, and soon there will be no prior investments to speak of, just direct transfers from workers to retirees, and it is not even covered completely by FICA, other tax revenues are needed to supplement. If you ran an investment firm that operated like Social Security, you would go to prison. Productivity gains are not passed along to worker wages because they are largely based on capital investment, not an increase in worker skill. If the owners are investing to improve productivity using the same workers, of course they will reap the benefits of the productivity gains. If you are working for me digging a hole and I buy a backhoe for you to use instead of a shovel, your productivity will skyrocket. That isn't based on you doing more work, it is based on me buying a backhoe. You don't get paid 100 times as much because of my capital investment. Instead of stealing less money, lets steal more money to give away for votes. There is no need to increase government revenue, it is already at historic highs. Better yet, eliminate regulations on who can buy and sell medication and where, and there will be far more competition leading to lower prices for everyone.
Don't know why people need to sling insults. Thanks. I figured it'd be something like that. I'm a big government type so I don't agree. I could entertain a reform of social security to make it leverage markets better, but it still needs to be universal and compulsory. And our current health insurance arrangement is garbage so i definitely dont want more of that.
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/corporate-news/article/sp-500-buybacks-set-quarterly-and-12-month-records-again/#:~:text=For the 12-months ending March 2022, buybacks were a,the March 2021 time period. The funny thing with people like you is how disconnected you are with everyone. Stock buy backs are up 100% Y/Y at a record 951 BILLION DOLLARS. Yay let's keep lowering the corp tax rates so corporations and hedge funds can buy back more stocks and buy more yatchs ! The good thing is people with your thinking are in the bottom 2% of society. Bootlicking hedge funds and getting on your knees and bootlicking wall street so they can keep recording record stock buybacks is utterly pathetic. Keep doing you .
