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My Fix for Social Security

It's currently more like a defined benefit pension, plagued by the same pervasive problems as most other defined benefit pensions.

Our fix needs to make it not be a defined benefit pension and be something else.

If we want it to be old age poverty insurance, we raise the eligibility age to "old" and asset test it and it's solvent forever. In fact if we raised the age to average life expectancy we could either raise benefits or cut taxes and still be solvent.

If we want it to be retirement welfare, we can keep the eligibility age about where it is and means/asset test it.

Lastly, if we want any semblance of generational fairness, we have to be willing to cut back the benefits to older retirees who have made out like bandits under the old model.

The system is plagued with systemic underfunding. Congress knew the cost structures of the system would implode in 1944. If you want it to be welfare, it is infinitely cheaper and easier to end the existing program and transfer the resources to an actual welfare program - like SSI.
 
My solution? End it.

For everyone over a certain age (say 40) the benefits will still be there when they are old. But for everyone else, zip.

Plus, I would build federal shelters in every major regional center - that includes beds/tiny apartments, a 'soup kitchen' and a hospital for basic medical care/emergencies (but not expensive operations like triple bypasses).

If you get to 65 (or any age) and you cannot take care of yourself, go to a government welfare center. They will give you shelter, clothing, food, basic/emergency care. All you need to survive.

If you cannot save enough money in 50 years - that is your own fault (unless you were disabled, then the government should help you more).

The government should look after those who cannot look after themselves...but 'look after' means the basics for life and that is it. You want more then that, earn it. If you cannot/will not, go to a charity. If they cannot/will not help you - you are out of luck.

In order to accomplish this, you would need to raise payroll taxes to roughly 15% and payroll taxes to 18%. is that what you are planning to do? Mind you after losing 18% of their wages to this system, the 39 year-old is like to arrive at retirement in poverty. What are you going to do about that?
 
Tax tax tax.

That's all you know huh ??

The only solution is to let in more foreign workers to make up for all the babies that the liberated American females are NOT having anymore.

That's the only solution.

More workers will simply postpone the problem while it grows larger. Every dollar that these new workers contributes creates future obligations. You might as well sell Montana to Canada and fund the system that way. That revenue at least does not create more obligations.

I think that you do not understand the problem at all. First, today undocumented workers contribute without a serious possibility of collecting benefits. So the first set of workers will drive the system further in the hole as their contributions create obligations. Second, unless these are high wage workers, you are apt to create a larger problem for the system. Low-wage workers tend to collect more than they contribute. So your solution make actually make the problem worse.
 
What you are describing is called "means testing."

This is also what Jeb Bush wants to do.

Pity that his campaign is sputtering.

The Donald has not said anything on this yet.

Hillary will keep it all the same and kick the can down the road. That is actually the most politically popular approach.

That is what Jeb Bush says that he wants to do. The problem is that no one on his campaign staff understands how the system works. He is proposing to reduce the level of benefits in the 2nd bend point. What he is calling wealthy retirees are what we today call minimum wage workers. Previously he said that increasing the retirement age to 68 or 70 would solve the problem for anyone under 40. DOH. It actually moved the solvency of the system out 1 year. So he was off by 3 decades.

Let me know if you want my article on his plan (well it is Christie's plan, but he has changed the name on the cover).
 
The solution to social security has always been simple. Invest the surplus money that was paid in by most of us. We were taxed more than was paid out because it was known the number of people collecting could not be supported by the number of workers in the future. The surplus social security should have been invested instead of spent and an IOU issued in its place. Right now we have an IOU for roughly 3 trillion dollars instead of an actual 30 trillion or more if the money had been invested. If and when we need the 3 trillion dollars for social security the people today will have to be taxed again for the money. Could you imagine a 401k where instead of investing the money you spent it and put an IOU in a box and put your kids name on it.

Then you have the doom and gloom who say the money could be lost if invested in Gold, Silver, and Stocks. Well I have invested in all of the above and I have done very well along with every other diversified investment over the long term. My money has doubled every 5 to 7 years without fail when averaged out over the last 40 years. If you plug the surplus social security paid in over the past 60+ years into any investment program calculator and 30 trillion I am using would be the absolute worse it could have done. In reality it would have done much better. The problem today would be what to do with all the money not if we could retire comfortably.

This isn't entirely thought out. First, the system was entirely a pay-as-you-go. Every penny in went out in the form of benefits. There was nothing substantive to invest until the mid-1990s, so plug zero into your calculator - I think you will get zero. Second, there hasn't been any excess cash in the system to invest since 2009. Third, Social Security isn't a retirement plan. It is old age insurance. Your retiree who dies at 85 probably would be better off. The only that dies at 95 is likely to regret confusing a retirement account and old-age insurance. The guy who doesn't have a car wreck would be better off with a personal-auto wreck account. The guy who has the wreck isn't.
 
In order to accomplish this, you would need to raise payroll taxes to roughly 15% and payroll taxes to 18%. is that what you are planning to do? Mind you after losing 18% of their wages to this system, the 39 year-old is like to arrive at retirement in poverty. What are you going to do about that?

What I already typed...federal government 'welfare centers' in regional centers.

Everything they need to survive.
 
This isn't entirely thought out. First, the system was entirely a pay-as-you-go. Every penny in went out in the form of benefits. There was nothing substantive to invest until the mid-1990s, so plug zero into your calculator - I think you will get zero. Second, there hasn't been any excess cash in the system to invest since 2009. Third, Social Security isn't a retirement plan. It is old age insurance. Your retiree who dies at 85 probably would be better off. The only that dies at 95 is likely to regret confusing a retirement account and old-age insurance. The guy who doesn't have a car wreck would be better off with a personal-auto wreck account. The guy who has the wreck isn't.

I will take all the surplus money prior to 1990 instead.
The surplus as of 1990 was approximately $225,277,000,000.00 according to the social security web site. I would call that a substantial investment.

In 2009 social security had a surplus of $2,336,798,000,000.00. My investments have more than doubled since 2009. That alone would put social security over 5 trillion to the good.

In 1937 there was a surplus of 766 million dollars. By 1938 it was over 1 billion.

Why don't you tell me how much money 1 billion invested in stocks in 1938 would be worth today?

Then do that for another 60 years and give me a total.
 
Fixing social security is rather simple.. getting the political will is not.

1. We need to raise taxes. Currently.. there is a tax difference between capital gains, and Earned income.. which creates a problem.

Tax capital gains that same as earned income.. and take the difference and use it to shore up social security. (and if you paid the tax.. you get social security even in you didn;t work enough quarters).

2. Slow the benefit growth. that is an issue.. as many have pointed out.. benefits have been growing faster than wages..and depending on how its calculated faster than inflation.

3. Increase the cap on social security from 118,500 to say 300,000.

Easy. All we need to do is get through the baby boomers and we will be good.,,
 
What you are describing is called "means testing."

Yes, I referred to it in my post. But means testing is typically income-based. Asset-testing is different, as it measures assets. One sixty-something-year old could have $100,000 in net assets and $40,000 a year in income and $50,000 in expenses, and another could have $5,000,000 in net assets, $25,000 in income and $35,000 in expenses. One could pass the means test despite having significant wealth, and the other could fail a means test despite not being very well off at all.

Simplistic example, but the point is means testing ignores accumulated wealth, so you can have wealthy frugal people living off the public dime without having to spend their potentially enormous wealth. Doesn't make much sense to me that a financially troubled program should insist upon shelling money out to people who already have accumulated enormous wealth that they could simply consume.
 
As I said before...KILL IT.

And replace it with federal government regional shelters that guarantees to provide all the shelter, food, clothing and basic medical care a human needs for survival.

Social Security was w nice thought but a ridiculously unrealistic one.

Plus, the government should NOT be in the business of helping the elderly survive except for the basics. The elderly are (overall) a financial burden on the government - that is a fact. Most of them do not/cannot work and pay comparatively little taxes. They take up roughly half of all healthcare costs. They take resources from working taxpayers, often just to keep the aged alive for longer. A financial waste.
Once someone turns 65, other then basic needs for survival (as I stated above) the federal government should have nothing more to do with them financially and leave any care they need to charities.

And save the 'they give back in other ways' argument. Most of my friends are actually over 65 and they are special to me. But in terms of tax dollars...the elderly that depend on the government for assistance take FAR more money from the system then they can - from that point forwards - EVER give back.
The poor elderly are a fiscal black hole for federal government's.

And also please save the 'government's should be kind' nonsense. Governments should be efficient, lawful and logical. Kindness is for charities...that is why they exist.
 
As I said before...KILL IT.

And replace it with federal government regional shelters that guarantees to provide all the shelter, food, clothing and basic medical care a human needs for survival.

Social Security was w nice thought but a ridiculously unrealistic one.

Plus, the government should NOT be in the business of helping the elderly survive except for the basics. The elderly are (overall) a financial burden on the government - that is a fact. Most of them do not/cannot work and pay comparatively little taxes. They take up roughly half of all healthcare costs. They take resources from working taxpayers, often just to keep the aged alive for longer. A financial waste.
Once someone turns 65, other then basic needs for survival (as I stated above) the federal government should have nothing more to do with them financially and leave any care they need to charities.

And save the 'they give back in other ways' argument. Most of my friends are actually over 65 and they are special to me. But in terms of tax dollars...the elderly that depend on the government for assistance take FAR more money from the system then they can - from that point forwards - EVER give back.
The poor elderly are a fiscal black hole for federal government's.

And also please save the 'government's should be kind' nonsense. Governments should be efficient, lawful and logical. Kindness is for charities...that is why they exist.

When we have an economy as large as ours, with tons of food, housing, energy, and just about everything else you can think of, it's pretty ridiculous to say that we cannot afford to take care of our retirees. We can, and we can do it easily. Tell me what we would run short of if we doubled SS payments. Food? Housing? Electricity?

As long as an economy has the real resources to spare (and we do), the only difference between cutting retirees a check big enough to live comfortably on and your bare minimum solution is the amount of commerce their spending will generate. In my world, GDP is higher for the increased spending of seniors, plus they get to live comfortably. So unless you can point to a real cost to more government spending, my scenario wins, hands down.
 
In response to anybody who thinks that privatizing Social Security is the way to go, ask yourselves where most of your gains come from when you hold stocks. Some comes from dividends, which is somewhat reflective of our economy's success. But the capital gains part comes from other people investing new money into the market. Outside of IPOs, our "investment" in stocks doesn't go to increasing production, it just goes to whomever sells us the secondhand stocks we are buying.

Even if our investments somehow made it into a company's hands, that doesn't mean that they could benefit from that. A company can't make a profit on their investment without the requisite increase in demand for their products, and privatizing Social Security does absolutely nothing to increase aggregate demand. The stock market may go up for a while, but it won't be because GDP is increasing, it will go up because a bunch of new money has been funneled into the stock market itself. And that won't last.
 
Just so there's no confusion, Social Security benefits are indexed to a specific CPI index, CPI-W (urban wage earners and clerical workers). This index often shows higher inflation than broader inflation measures e.g., the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Index, which is the focus of the Federal Reserve. For example, during the 30-year period ended 12/31/2014, CPI-W showed average annual inflation of 2.7%. The PCE registered average annual inflation of 2.3%. Over time (compounding), the difference is significant. For example, $1,000 in monthly benefits at the beginning of 1985 would have risen to $2,207.19 by the end of 2014 using CPI-W. Had PCE been used, the monthly benefit would have increased to $1,967.45. That's a $239.74 difference with CPI-W resulting in a monthly benefit that would be 12.2% above what it would have been had PCE been used to index benefits.

Data:
CPI-W: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CWSR0000SA0
PCE: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PCEPI

I would point out, however, that that is a 30 year span, and average life expectancy at 65 is about another 20 years.
 
In response to anybody who thinks that privatizing Social Security is the way to go, ask yourselves where most of your gains come from when you hold stocks. Some comes from dividends, which is somewhat reflective of our economy's success. But the capital gains part comes from other people investing new money into the market. Outside of IPOs, our "investment" in stocks doesn't go to increasing production, it just goes to whomever sells us the secondhand stocks we are buying.

Even if our investments somehow made it into a company's hands, that doesn't mean that they could benefit from that. A company can't make a profit on their investment without the requisite increase in demand for their products, and privatizing Social Security does absolutely nothing to increase aggregate demand. The stock market may go up for a while, but it won't be because GDP is increasing, it will go up because a bunch of new money has been funneled into the stock market itself. And that won't last.

Private accounts generate significantly larger returns to retirees, meaning that their expressed demand in retirement is also significantly higher. All these baby boomers who haven't saved for retirement because they were busy "boosting aggregate demand" by buying a new F-150 every 5 years? What is going to happen to their spending when they retire, and have to rely on a pitiful check from SS to keep afloat?
 
Yes, I referred to it in my post. But means testing is typically income-based. Asset-testing is different, as it measures assets. One sixty-something-year old could have $100,000 in net assets and $40,000 a year in income and $50,000 in expenses, and another could have $5,000,000 in net assets, $25,000 in income and $35,000 in expenses. One could pass the means test despite having significant wealth, and the other could fail a means test despite not being very well off at all.

Simplistic example, but the point is means testing ignores accumulated wealth, so you can have wealthy frugal people living off the public dime without having to spend their potentially enormous wealth. Doesn't make much sense to me that a financially troubled program should insist upon shelling money out to people who already have accumulated enormous wealth that they could simply consume.

The system is in financial trouble. And means-testing may be required. But it makes even less sense to change a system that is suppose to lower poverty in the elderly into one that encourages it.
 
Private accounts generate significantly larger returns to retirees, meaning that their expressed demand in retirement is also significantly higher. All these baby boomers who haven't saved for retirement because they were busy "boosting aggregate demand" by buying a new F-150 every 5 years? What is going to happen to their spending when they retire, and have to rely on a pitiful check from SS to keep afloat?

You are missing the point. How do private accounts generate larger returns? That is the question. If all the dollars that now go towards FICA taxes are shifted into the stock market, sure, it will go up, temporarily. But stock prices will still have little to do with reality. As boomers start cashing out for retirement, you would hear the same complaints that you hear now from young workers paying FICA taxes - more dollars are going to go out from the market than are going to come in, and that would send the stock market down. Real people lose real savings when that happens. But with today's system, an abnormally large number of retirees just means larger federal deficits, and nobody's savings are at risk.

The stock market is basically just a bunch of people swapping dollars and secondhand stock. It has little to do with the economy at all. And as much as I hate to throw around the term "Ponzi scheme," that's pretty much what the stock market is. Your returns, outside of dividends, are completely dependent upon new money being brought in; the companies don't see a penny of it. When new money comes in, the market goes up, and when money leaves, the market goes down, regardless of what is happening in the broader economy. You are gambling that you will pick the best times to buy in and cash out. And that is a lousy basis for what is essentially a safety net program.

What will feed and shelter retirees (and everybody else, for that matter) in the year 2025 is our economy's production in 2025, not "saved" production from 2015. Should people save some money for later? Of course - as long as the aggregate demand that is lost because of net savings is replaced so our economy doesn't shrink. Deficit spending accomplishes that, because the dollars are new; a rising stock market does not.
 
You are missing the point. How do private accounts generate larger returns? That is the question. If all the dollars that now go towards FICA taxes are shifted into the stock market, sure, it will go up, temporarily. But stock prices will still have little to do with reality. As boomers start cashing out for retirement, you would hear the same complaints that you hear now from young workers paying FICA taxes

:shrug: under the system proposed they wouldn't "cash out", they would live on a portion, similar to an annuity, which would be generated by returns.

Though your point is well made, I think that you are over-exaggerating it.

The stock market is basically just a bunch of people swapping dollars and secondhand stock. It has little to do with the economy at all. And as much as I hate to throw around the term "Ponzi scheme," that's pretty much what the stock market is. Your returns, outside of dividends, are completely dependent upon new money being brought in; the companies don't see a penny of it.

Companies typically own a portion of their own stock. However, accepting your premise (and I think that if I spent some time on it, I would non-concur), the program as mentioned does not withdraw savings, but rather returns, and only continues to add savings. When comparing Ponzi schemes, it is thus more stable than the current one.

When new money comes in, the market goes up, and when money leaves, the market goes down, regardless of what is happening in the broader economy. You are gambling that you will pick the best times to buy in and cash out. And that is a lousy basis for what is essentially a safety net program.

No, we are betting that multi-decade return averages will continue to look like multi-decade returns.

What will feed and shelter retirees (and everybody else, for that matter) in the year 2025 is our economy's production in 2025, not "saved" production from 2015. Should people save some money for later? Of course - as long as the aggregate demand that is lost because of net savings is replaced so our economy doesn't shrink. Deficit spending accomplishes that, because the dollars are new; a rising stock market does not.

There we're going to have a serious disagreement, but it's off-topic from the thread. :)
 
:shrug: under the system proposed they wouldn't "cash out", they would live on a portion, similar to an annuity, which would be generated by returns.

But what "returns"? Dividends only? Because otherwise, net money is going to be leaving the stock market whenever the retirees are spending more money than the workers are adding in, just like SS today. Except you don't have a sovereign with money-creating powers writing the checks.

Even if the returns were somehow real, you cannot pour unlimited amounts of money into investment and expect returns on it. Companies only make money when there is sufficient demand for their product. If they overinvest, they lose money.

Companies typically own a portion of their own stock. However, accepting your premise (and I think that if I spent some time on it, I would non-concur), the program as mentioned does not withdraw savings, but rather returns, and only continues to add savings.

The only real returns (from the economy) are from dividends. Anything else is coming from the dollars somebody else uses to buy stock. If you are suggesting that we could all just live off of our dividends, I think you are dreaming.

No, we are betting that multi-decade return averages will continue to look like multi-decade returns.

Two problems with that. First, people don't live in multi-decade moments. If you retired in 2007, you would have seen about half of your retirement account go up in smoke, with no chance of making up lost ground by buying low for a few years. Second, the stock market trends up over time because there is net money being added into the market over time - which is largely dependent on federal deficit spending.

You also have the problem, as I said above, of a large generation affecting the market. Boomers work, boomers save, and the dollars they stick into stocks drives the market up over the long run. Then boomers retire, boomers dis-save, and the dollars they remove from the market drives it down over the long run (or at least blunts the gains). And that's just the relatively rich people who own stock - imagine the effects if every retiree had their whole nest egg in the stock market, and they started to retire (and remove net dollars from the market) in droves. Who is going to be able to pump new money into a falling market? Under a private SS plan, everybody is already going to be putting in a percent of their earnings. And when the market is falling, they aren't going to do so happily, either.
 
The system is in financial trouble. And means-testing may be required. But it makes even less sense to change a system that is suppose to lower poverty in the elderly into one that encourages it.

It has succeeded in lowering elderly poverty...

...For 1-2 generations of privileged Americans. And at what cost?

No data indicate anything positive about the millennial generation's hope of ever catching up to their parents and grandparents in terms of lifelong financial security. Pensions are a dead concept, their rate of savings/retirement deferral is pitiful, and the outlook of SS and Medicare are objectively very poor. Perfect storm of bad news for them. Most of the proposals argue about whether to take the cost of the problem out of millennials' right pockets vs. their left pockets.
 
But what "returns"? Dividends only? Because otherwise, net money is going to be leaving the stock market whenever the retirees are spending more money than the workers are adding in, just like SS today.

:shrug: under my proposal, they take an annualized 5%, deducted monthly, while keeping their money invested. I don't know if he's established a % yet.

Even if the returns were somehow real, you cannot pour unlimited amounts of money into investment and expect returns on it

No one is pouring unlimited amounts of money into investment. We are shifting 10% of wage-income into investment. Nor would we be the first or the third or the fourth country to do something like this. None of them have experienced the problems you are imagining.

The only real returns (from the economy) are from dividends. Anything else is coming from the dollars somebody else uses to buy stock.

That is incorrect. Companies can increase in value. Plenty of companies don't produce dividends and their values change all the time. In fact, generally dividend payers are the older, slower-growing companies v those looking to grow through reinvestment.

Two problems with that. First, people don't live in multi-decade moments. If you retired in 2007, you would have seen about half of your retirement account go up in smoke, with no chance of making up lost ground by buying low for a few years.

If you retired in 2007 you would have continued to draw small amounts off of your account while it also rebounded in 2010, and you'd be richer today than you were when you retired. People live across multi-decade time spans, and under this program they would be investing across multi-decade time spans.

Second, the stock market trends up over time because there is net money being added into the market over time

Which in this case would continue to occur because 10% of wage income would continue to flow in to the market.

You also have the problem, as I said above, of a large generation affecting the market. Boomers work, boomers save, and the dollars they stick into stocks drives the market up over the long run.

The boomers costs are generally currently baked in the cake. They wouldn't have much effect on this program because this program doesn't start with "A) travel backwards in time to the year 1970". Someone who is currently 51 (the youngest boomer) who makes $60K a year is going to retire with ~$150K in his account, which will only replace $640/month of government expenditures.

Then boomers retire, boomers dis-save, and the dollars they remove from the market drives it down over the long run (or at least blunts the gains).

If they took all their money out, and we had started this program decades ago, neither of which is accurate, yes. However, if you treat it like an annuity and they get 5% annualized divided monthly, then no.

Who is going to be able to pump new money into a falling market?

Everyone with a job.

Under a private SS plan, everybody is already going to be putting in a percent of their earnings. And when the market is falling, they aren't going to do so happily, either.

If they are wise to the fact that they are buying low, they will. But "people aren't happy about losing money" isn't really an argument for or against.
 
It has succeeded in lowering elderly poverty...

...For 1-2 generations of privileged Americans. And at what cost?

No data indicate anything positive about the millennial generation's hope of ever catching up to their parents and grandparents in terms of lifelong financial security. Pensions are a dead concept, their rate of savings/retirement deferral is pitiful, and the outlook of SS and Medicare are objectively very poor. Perfect storm of bad news for them. Most of the proposals argue about whether to take the cost of the problem out of millennials' right pockets vs. their left pockets.

First, I would be very careful about any statistics which connect SS and poverty. They are generally based on Census data is not very reliable.

Today the return on SS is negative, so anyone who is lifted out of poverty by benefits was put into poverty the cost.
 
First, I would be very careful about any statistics which connect SS and poverty. They are generally based on Census data is not very reliable.

Today the return on SS is negative, so anyone who is lifted out of poverty by benefits was put into poverty the cost.

Even loosely correlating the SS and elderly poverty, is there any disputing the improved relative financial security of those whose return from the program was positive (Silent Generation and early boomers) vs. the outlook for the generations whose benefit is negative (all other generations)?

All I'm saying is that, sure, one can call the program a "success"... Provided that she or he is very selective about who gets included in that assessment.
 
Private accounts generate significantly larger returns to retirees, meaning that their expressed demand in retirement is also significantly higher. All these baby boomers who haven't saved for retirement because they were busy "boosting aggregate demand" by buying a new F-150 every 5 years? What is going to happen to their spending when they retire, and have to rely on a pitiful check from SS to keep afloat?
Private accounts do generate larger returns, but are not without their own issues.

Again, Australia is instructive. They started superannuation in the early 90s, with a low mandatory employer contribution. It is currently at 9.5%, and is scheduled to rise to 12% by 2025. (FYI, numbers are in AUD unless specified otherwise)

As noted, Super need to be quite restricted in order to truly replace defined benefits. The current AU system allows individuals to withdraw all of their funds, and many people treat it like they've won the lottery -- and go on the government dole once their Super runs out. All those irresponsible people who buy new trucks every 5 years (hardly a marker of excessive spending btw, but let's go with it anyway), what do you think they will do when they gain access to $1 million on their 60th birthday?

Anyway. As a result, Australia still needs a defined benefit program, and currently spends $41 billion just for income support for seniors. That is roughly 10% of Australia's federal budget expenditures. In contrast, OASI takes up around 19% of the US budget.

Supers aren't always easy to manage. Many people open new accounts when they switch jobs, which increases their admin costs. Others lose track of accounts, currently totaling nearly $6 billion in improperly tracked accounts.

Supers are also big windfalls... for fund managers. There are $2 trillion in Super funds, and annual fees are around $30 billion per year; that includes a number of not-for-profit fund managers. (In comparison, SS's entire admin costs are $6 billion USD.) Unsurprisingly, the big banks take a big slice of the fees, and are trying to kill off the non-profit managers. I.e. in exchange for those bigger returns, there are costs to the recipients and benefits for the managers.

Further -- and as you keep trying to downplay -- diverting payroll taxes to the individual accounts will cost trillions of dollars, and the transition will take decades. How will those trillions be paid back? It won't be from payroll taxes, if we redirect 75% or more of payroll taxes into individual accounts and still have to fund Medicare and disability via payroll taxes.


Last but not least, these accounts are ultimately market-based. They gain in the long term -- but can crash, and crash hard, in the short term. If you had $1.5 million in an S&P Index Fund in December 1999, by June 2002 that same investment would be down to $815,000. You wouldn't recover until June 2007 -- at which point it crashed again, and bottomed out 2 years later at $797,000. (In fact, when adjusting for inflation, you would not have fully recovered until a few months ago! Inflation Adjusted S&P 500)

S&P looks great when you're averaging over 30 years, because it started on a massive tear in the early 80s. It looks even better if you fail to adjust for inflation, something most people do when looking at charts. But the reality is that your accounts won't grow a consistent 12% per year. Instead, it will be 15% one year, 5% the next, then a 36% loss, then a 2% gain, and so on. Retirees will also need to withdraw from their accounts, even when the market is headed to the basement. This compounds the impact of those losses.

I.e. the success of individual accounts are, to a great extent, a matter of luck and timing.


To sum it up: Privatization is really only an option if we are willing to....
• Put the Baby Boomer's retirement on the tab of the federal government
• Strictly control withdrawals
• Give up on the "Security" part of Social Security
• Pay big banks billions of dollars to manage the funds
• View cutting the cost of the program in half by 2060 a "success"
 
Further -- and as you keep trying to downplay -- diverting payroll taxes to the individual accounts will cost trillions of dollars, and the transition will take decades. How will those trillions be paid back?

Why do you pretend like this wasn't answered when it was answered in great detail, and the numbers were given to you?

cpwill said:
OASI expenditures in 2015 were $750 Bn. That represents a populace that is 100% on the government for benefits, but that dies off at an average rate of 1/19th per year. Your source points out that means testing the 1% gives us an 8% savings, so we'll take off 8% of expenditures for $690 Bn as our starting point for expenditures before we figure out the effect of slowing the growth. That produces 37% growth, but it does so over 75 years in an expanding manner. So, 1-(.37/75), we'll take 0.5166% off each year, starting in 2017.

Revenue first bumps up when we pop the cap. According to your source, it increases from 12.9% of payroll to 15.3%, and increases from there to about 15.57 by 2040. We will average that to 15.43

So, to get an idea of revenue, take Social Security's deficit for 2015 - $45 bn, subtract it from 750 to get $705 Bn. That's how much we divide by 12.9 to figure out what a percentage of payroll is. Multiplying that number by 15.43 gives us $843.27 Bn. The trustees assume that Payroll will grow by about 1.7%. So we will project $843.27*.2 for the initial years revenues, and increase that number by 1.7% every year.

So, the point at which those lines cross and we start producing surpluses rather than deficits for the original populace is 2027-2028. By 2044, the surpluses produced from that point forward have paid off the debts accumulated during the start-up years, producing a net $183 Bn surplus:

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Then, however, we have to figure out the costs of the new retirees.

We reduce the growth in benefits and the cost of benefits by the same (1/37th, 8% for the top 1%) as we did the original retirees. We take each age cohort, assume that 90% of a birth year make it to social security retirement, and say that they cost (750bn/19/cohortsize)*(new retiree cohort size). Median income is applied as is an average monthly SS check of $1,224. When a cohort dies, they pay a 50% tax on their SS accounts before those accounts are rolled into the SS accounts of their heirs, and those monies are rolled into the cost to government to count against the deficits created by the first 19 cohorts whose accounts did not fully replace their Social Security benefit.

We see that on an annual basis, the program for the new retirees begins to run a surplus starting in 2035 (so, a couple of years after they used to tell us Social Security would be bankrupt, we are running surpluses instead), and the cumulative debts run up by the annual deficits of the early years are paid off, and we have a net $59 Bn surplus by 2041. So, interestingly, the costs of these cohorts are completely paid off slightly sooner than the older cohorts.

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However, these are two portions of the same system. We need to add together the annual deficits to get an idea of the annual cost, and add together the rolling total costs, to get an idea of the impact on the national debt. What we see when we do that is by 2029, the system is running an annual surplus, and by 2043, we have paid off the costs from the previous cohorts entirely, and are now returning hundreds of billions of dollars to the treasury. By 2050, Social Security has provided more than $3.8 Trillion in surpluses, and is funding other government programs to the tune of $560 Billion a year. By 2060 (which you mentioned), that number has climbed to just shy of an inflation-adjusted (all numbers here are) trillion dollars a year.

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