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Social Security reserves forecast to run dry in 2022

Chiefgator said:
I know the reform is in order, and I thank you for providing me an example of a type of reform that is forthcoming. This still does not quell my anger over the fact that if the money was never taken out and put into the general fund, we would not need reform.
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As I understand it it's all a matter of bean counting, whether to include SS as part of the (general fund) Fed budget or not. At some point Nixon decided to include SS as part of the budget, which was a departure from previous admins. Today we could just as easily reverse that process but understand that it would jump the national debt by ~$2.6 trillion (the current SS Trust Fund balance) and increase the deficit ~$93 billion (SS net revenue from 2010).
 
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Grant said:
And that money is not going to be there. This is what happens when a population becomes dependent on a government. Watch the riots when these dependents realize the cupboard is bare. It will be worse than Greece.
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No, this is what happens when people who haven't got any clue at all themselves start believing the flat-out rotgut produced by a right-wing rag like the Washington Times which simply distorts the meaning of some numbers that weren't developed for the purpose to begin with.

Unless Republicans are somehow able to get their wish and prolong the Great Bush Recession for another 25 years or so, everyone alive and working today will be able to collect every single penny's worth of benefits presently promised to them. Far from being broke, the two SS Trust Funds are currently sitting on nearly $2.7 trillion in assets and that number is growing and will continue to grow until the vicinity of 2025-2030. At that point, the balance in the Trust Funds will trend down, once again reaching zero around 2050, just as the last of the baby-boomers is dying out.

That's exactly what is SUPPOSED to happen, but it will only to the extent that a few guesses turn out to be correct. First, the recession has to be near permanent. If the current GDP growth rate of 2.8% turns out to be normal for instance, the Trust Funds will never run out of money. Ever. You have to assume long-term growth rates of below 2% to get the Trust Funds to run dry. Second, immigration -- both legal and illegal -- has to stay essentially flat, even though baby-boomer retirements will be creating more vacancies than there are younger generation workers to fill them, and the home and health care service jobs that retired boomers will increase the demand for are jobs in which immigrants have been particularly successful. Third, this century will have to see the same breathrough levels of improvement in life expectancy as the second half of the last one did. Keep in mind that what's most relevant here is not life expectancy at birth, but life expectancy at full retirement age -- 66 or 67 depending on how old you are now.

So you can believe partisan balderdash or try to undertand what the actual numbers say. That's pretty much the choice, and it has been since Bush began his lying campaign about SS in 2005.
 
MaggieD said:
Then, my dear, where is the hue and cry about the latest Congressional gut of the program?? They've cut the employee contribution to SS by 33%. And nobody gives a **** 'cause it's money in their pockets. Hypocrites.
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The money lost to SS through the payroll tax holiday is made up to it out of general funds. Essentially, the 2% is subtracted from your taxes and added to the deficit.
 
Reality check, SS is a Ponzi Scheme, it's unsustainable, and it's going to implode. Medicare, Medicaide and now Obamacare will drive deficits to levels that make 17 Trillion seem like a pittance.


Politicians today only care about tomorrows re-election, and today's voters refuse to accept that it's really up to them to make sure the future doesn't destroy us.
 
MrVicchio said:
Reality check, SS is a Ponzi Scheme, it's unsustainable, and it's going to implode. Medicare, Medicaide and now Obamacare will drive deficits to levels that make 17 Trillion seem like a pittance.
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:scared: The sky is falling! The sky is falling!!! :scared:


MrVicchio said:
Politicians today only care about tomorrows re-election, and today's voters refuse to accept that it's really up to them to make sure the future doesn't destroy us.
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That's exactly what many of us have been saying all along. ;)
 
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Blue_State said:
And in all honesty, they seem to be failing us at an alamring rate. The politicians, not your fellow Americans.
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Caution: The majority of your fellow Americans is as dumb as a stick.
 
Erod said:
LOL, geez, what rock are you living under? The constitution says nothing about social security; the money was squandered, not invested; and you can't pay your debts if you're using that money to buy votes.
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Wrong. It was invested. As fiduciary responsibility would require. And the entity whose bonds were purchased used the proceeds for its own purposes, just as corporations use the proceeds of corporate bond sales for their own purposes, and school systems use the proceeds of school bond sales for their own purposes. Apparently unknown to many, this is how capital markets work. This is what is SUPPOSED to happen. No one in his right mind would issue debt if he had nothing at all in mind to do with the proceeds.
 
j-mac said:
No, they could just give me back what I have already paid in, and let me invest it...I'd get a better return.
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Maybe, maybe not. Unless the tax or benefit formulas are changed by then, the average worker with a spouse and two children retiring at full retirement age in 2030 will have earned a real ROI on his payroll taxes of just under 4%. The average investor would have to depend on pure luck to do better than that, and that's not counting the value of the free disability and life insurance components of SS, each of which is comparable to a commercial policy of several hundred thousand dollars. That 4% doesn't apply to everyone of course. In general, SS treats lower-income workers better than higher-income ones. In some narrow cases, the ROI for rich people can go negative. Least of their worries, though, and in any case, don't go thinking so fast how much better off you would be without SS. Keep in mind that the two things that American males most severely overestimate are how good they are in the sack, and how good they are in the stock market.
 
Objective Voice said:
Now, it's true that the Baby Boomer generation is retiring in large numbers and that's feeding into the "reform Social Security Now" frinzy...
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The number of boomers retiring is still small. It will grow, then peak, then start to decline again after 2030. There won't be any more late-boomers to retire at that point, and the early ones by then will start dying off in droves.

Objective Voice said:
...but the nation also has a millions of disabled individuals who receive SSI/SSDI who very likely did not pay into the system. Add to that the fact that Medicade Part D isn't paid for and it's no wonder Social Security is going broke far sooner than expected.
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Tweet!!! SSI is not a part of Social Security. It is not paid for out of payroll taxes. None of the SS Trust Funds holds any cash on behalf of SSI. The Medicare Trust Fund exists with respect to Part-A (hospital insurance) only. It has nothing to do with Part-B, Part-C, or Part-D.
 
MrVicchio said:
Reality check, SS is a Ponzi Scheme, it's unsustainable, and it's going to implode. Medicare, Medicaide and now Obamacare will drive deficits to levels that make 17 Trillion seem like a pittance.


Politicians today only care about tomorrows re-election, and today's voters refuse to accept that it's really up to them to make sure the future doesn't destroy us.
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Do you have anything relevant to add to the discussion? The broken record player tactic might seem clever to some; but i do not know how much closer you can get to desperation.
 
Some quality stuff there Cardinal, hopefully a select few will take heed.
 
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MrVicchio said:
Obviously I'm a FOOL! SS a few years ago, we were told wouldn't start running dry till after 2036! I mean, what's 14 years really?
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Can't disagree with the "FOOL" part, as what you are comparing is apples and oranges. 2037 is the projected date of trust fund exhaustion under the very pessimistic assumptions made by the SS Trustees. 2022 is the date at which budgetary outlays would first exceed budgetary receipts. Not only are the concepts different, but the budgetary date would mark the point at which trust fund balances would begin to decline, not the date at which they would be exhausted. Maybe try not to pontificate over things you've read about but don't actually understand.
 
cpwill said:
better give up on it. the CBO is also predicting that - on our current path of spending - the economy shuts down in 2027.
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CBO has not predicted, and has not even projected, that the economy will shut down in 2027.

cpwill said:
yeah. you know what else isn't safe and secure US Treasury bonds? the promissory notes in the Social Security Trust Fund :).
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Notes held by the SSTF in fact ARE Treasury bonds in laddered maturities that extend from now into 2026.
 
cpwill said:
Either one believes we should put our "entitlement" programs on a path towards long-term stability and dramatically reduce outlays in order to avoid a fiscal collapse, or one believes in fully funding these programs until they destroy the economy. In the 2020's. At which point we become Greece, only much worse because no one can bail us out, and so we are throwing our elderly off the programs all of a sudden and rapidly, to include those who probably lack the means to support themselves without. Which are you?
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This is a stupefyingly ignorant paragraph that is based on utter nonsense and hogwash plus some baseless end-times rant that doesn't even qualify as speculation.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
This is a stupefyingly ignorant paragraph that is based on utter nonsense and hogwash plus some baseless end-times rant that doesn't even qualify as speculation.
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Is this pure ad hom personal attack supposed to make us think that you are intellectually superior or something? Because it just makes you look arrogant and pathetic.


j-mac
 
j-mac said:
Is this pure ad hom personal attack supposed to make us think that you are intellectually superior or something? Because it just makes you look arrogant and pathetic.


j-mac
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Do you enjoy utter nonsense because it is politically aligned to your ideology?
 
Catawba said:
For those like the author of this thread who are uninformed about the SS trust funds: SS Trust Fund FAQs:
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Oh, my god...ACTUAL FACTS??? What are you bringing THOSE into the discussion for???
 
j-mac said:
Wow, you're so independent your far left.....Shocker!


j-mac
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Lord knows, FACTS have a decidedly liberal bias, which goes a ways explaining your abhorance of them.
 
Samhain said:
As the trust fund starts to decrease in value, the most obvious correlation in publicly known data sets will be the decrease in intra-government holdings and an increase, of the same amount, in public debt.
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Under an assumption that debt maturing to SSTF and not rolled over was financed by selling new debt to different investors, public debt would stay the same. The decline in intragovernmental holdings representing the maturity would be offset by an increase in debt held by the public representing the new issuance, hence it's a wash as far as public debt as a whole goes.
 
j-mac said:
That is a good point, and what I wonder is how much of these so called bonds that were the iou's placed in SS are absolute junk due to the US monetizing its own debt.
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LOL! Why don't you explain how "monetizing the debt" would turn anything into absolute junk? Some of the gasbag mysticism that manages to float around simply amazes me sometimes.
 
What is a Ponzi scheme?
"A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity."

Why do Ponzi schemes collapse?
"With little or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out."


So after reading exactly what a Ponzi scheme is and why it eventually collapses tell me why ss isn't one and won't collapse.
 
haymarket said:
If you want to argue, they are located in Washington DC. There is a very good restaurant a few blocks from their building and I would be happy to recommend it to you while to go and cross verbal swords with the nine justices.
Jaleo — the renowned Spanish tapas restaurant of José Andrés
They specialize in small plates of Spanish food. Its wonderful.
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It's a tapas place. A lot of people do like it, even though it's a chain (frowned on by "foodies"). But it's at 7th and E Streets, NW (Penn Quarter). Not exactly a walk for the squeamish of you're starting out at the Supreme Court (Capitol Hill).
 
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