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Social Security reserves forecast to run dry in 2022

MoSurveyor said:
In fact, you've have to go extremely far down in the tax tables to get the rate down to 14% once you've added 7.65% to it.
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Heck, don't forget federal excise taxes. Those are highly regressive as well. The burden on the lowest 20% is ten times that on the top 1%.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
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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Yup - thats it. have been there twice - great food both times. And I did not realize it was a chain. If I remember correctly, we visited the Capitol, went past the Supreme Court, went to the Archives only to find it closed for renovation -and then we hit the restaurant....... although a cab ride may have been involved at some point.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Essentially, every Treasury Bond is a government IOU. As long as all those financial wizards who believe US Treasuries are one of the safest investments on the planet get turned down as well then I'm good with that. And you thought the last financial crisis was a doozy! Wait until the World finds out US Treasuries are junk ...
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A ten-dollar bill is also an IOU, and currency and debt are backed by exactly the same thing. They are each claims on the output of real goods and services produced by the economy that issued them. In the case of the US, that amounts to 23% of everything that is produced anywhere in the world. No other nation is even close. The only people who believe that US currency and debt are junk are those whose heads have been filled with junk while they weren't watching.
 
j-mac said:
No, I really don't...I have a 401K, and an IRA backed by gold. But I would like to get back the money I've paid in since I was 15 years old....




So it is another wealth redistribution scheme based on a lie.



Yep, progressives all...I think you know my opinion of them.


j-mac
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You seem to feel personally betrayed about this whole belief thing. Can I ask you just how old were you when you stopped believing in the following

a- Santa Claus
b- the Tooth Fairy
c- the Easter Bunny
d- that little Irish dude who pitches Lucky charms cereal

Social Security is a nationwide program designed to provide retirement income and a solid support base for the vast majority of society as they and we age as a society. For anyone to consider it merely as a personal or individual retirement savings account is to intentionally and deliberately commit intellectual fraud of the worst sort.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
A ten-dollar bill is also an IOU, and currency and debt are backed by exactly the same thing. They are each claims on the output of real goods and services produced by the economy that issued them. In the case of the US, that amounts to 23% of everything that is produced anywhere in the world. No other nation is even close. The only people who believe that US currency and debt are junk are those whose heads have been filled with junk while they weren't watching.
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Is status, and wealth static?

j-mac
 
j-mac said:
And this is the problem that we run into. The USSC should not be setting precident that in effect creates law, or as in the case of abortion some percieved 'right' unanumerated by the population, and circumvent the 10th amendment. That you ascribe to a body of unelected lifetime appointees that once seated are accountable to virtually NO ONE! And basically dumping the Constitution in favor of implementing an agenda against the will of the people.
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Federal judges were accorded life terms specifically to INSULATE them from the whacko will of the people. The founders hated the notion of direct democracy and spent great energies in keeping that wolf from the door. It is meanwhile not now nor has it ever been necessary for a power to be specifically enumerated in the Constitution for it to exist. Powers implied exist quite equally. In fact powers lie at this moment dormant within the Constitution simply because we have not invented yet the circumstances under which they will apply.
 
haymarket said:
You seem to feel personally betrayed about this whole belief thing. Can I ask you just how old were you when you stopped believing in the following

a- Santa Claus
b- the Tooth Fairy
c- the Easter Bunny
d- that little Irish dude who pitches Lucky charms cereal

Social Security is a nationwide program designed to provide retirement income and a solid support base for the vast majority of society as they and we age as a society. For anyone to consider it merely as a personal or individual retirement savings account is to intentionally and deliberately commit intellectual fraud of the worst sort.
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Wow, that is some really well written insult you have there....If I weren't on to you, I'd have to sign off and go have a good cry.....heh, heh...

See the thing is you are arguing what no one, and not myself has said here...I think that is the definition of a strawman argument is it not?


j-mac
 
Kushinator said:
Standard & Poors made a similar mistake in downgrading the U.S. credit rating.
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The mistake was in not realizing that markets would simply ignore the downgrade, which -- in combination with the disastrous errors of the rating services leading up to the Great Bush Recession -- is causing people to wonder why these people are at all relevant to the workings of any major economy. The best face that can be put on it really is via its value as a hard, cold, slap in the face to Tea Party Republicans and their ideological inflexibiliry concerning the need to increase revenue.
 
j-mac said:
Wow, that is some really well written insult you have there....If I weren't on to you, I'd have to sign off and go have a good cry.....heh, heh...

See the thing is you are arguing what no one, and not myself has said here...I think that is the definition of a strawman argument is it not?


j-mac
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Actually it was intended to make you smile. Like this ;):):2razz:

You seem to really be angry or hurt that some reason which you believe was given for Social Security is different than what you believe the program now does. I think its funny that you would put your faith into something like that.

But I will tell you what I will do - why don't you just present the reasons the sponsors gave for Social Security in their own words and we can them compare it to the program that was instituted and we can see just what is what and if you have a point or not?

Sound fair?
 
Chiefgator said:
J-Mac, SS was not set up as a Ponzi scheme. In its original design, it works just fine. The billions of dollars collected over the years, thru the principle of compound interest, would be sufficient to fund it forever. Basically the payments would all be Capital Gains.
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Social Security was a pay-as-you-go system. No significant interest or capital gains. Current payroll taxes paid for current beneficiary payments. The two were reset periodically to assure that they would remain in general balance. Once the then far-off blip of the baby boomers was recognized however, that system wouldn't work anymore. That's when the revisions of 1983 created an exceess on the revenue side that would be saved up to use as a cushion when those boomer retirements finally hit. Once that particular crisis is past, the Trust Funds will go right back to zero, which is where they started.

Chiefgator said:
However, over the years, the fund has been raided by every politician imaginable. Clinton and Newt were the worst with their paper "surplus". If the benefits had only been taken frm dividends and other programs kept their hands out of the cookie jar, we would not be facing the collapse that is staring us in the face.
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All of this is wrong. As any trustee would, the SSTF trustees have invested the cash they don't need yet for decades. And on the other side of the table of course, ALL borrowers use the proceeds of bond sales for their own purposes. Meanwhile, the FY1999 and FY2000 budgets were in surplus even if the sizable SS surpluses were not counted.

And there is of course no collapse of SS at all that is staring us in the face. Right-wing whackos have preached this as a way of discrediting a system that they have always hated simply because Democrats have been getting credit for it at the polls for decades, just as they will now get credit for HCR.

Chiefgator said:
The sad thing is that off this had been done in the private sector, the responsible parties that stole money from the retirement fund would all be in jail....
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The exact same thing happens every day in the private sector. Nobody goes to jail. Learn to be the master of your own imagination.
 
liblady said:
That's exactly what I meant, thanks.
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And it's exactly correct as well. Since 2005 in particular, the right-wing has been trying to convince people that the perfectly solid SS system they are paying into is somehow going to go broke, and the only thing to do is get rid of it. They have made up endless lies and repeated them often and loudly enough that some people have fallen for it all. It is total crap from start to finish.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Federal judges were accorded life terms specifically to INSULATE them from the whacko will of the people. The founders hated the notion of direct democracy and spent great energies in keeping that wolf from the door. It is meanwhile not now nor has it ever been necessary for a power to be specifically enumerated in the Constitution for it to exist. Powers implied exist quite equally. In fact powers lie at this moment dormant within the Constitution simply because we have not invented yet the circumstances under which they will apply.
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I don't think you have the founders intent correct. Although you are right that they didn't like a system of direct, 100% democracy, They certainly didn't want a judicary that reigned supreme over the congress either. You are advocating the making up rights out of whole cloth that rely on interpetitation of some sort of maliable whim of the day, rather than following the constitution as written.

IOW, according to you, why have the Constitution, or congress at all? If all we need are judges that hold power to change law, and or rights on their whim, or as we have seen political reasoning, then why not just abolish our nation as it exists now, for your paradigm?


j-mac
 
j-mac said:
I don't think you have the founders intent correct. Although you are right that they didn't like a system of direct, 100% democracy, They certainly didn't want a judicary that reigned supreme over the congress either. You are advocating the making up rights out of whole cloth that rely on interpetitation of some sort of maliable whim of the day, rather than following the constitution as written.

IOW, according to you, why have the Constitution, or congress at all? If all we need are judges that hold power to change law, and or rights on their whim, or as we have seen political reasoning, then why not just abolish our nation as it exists now, for your paradigm?


j-mac
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Your objection dates back over two centuries to the Marbury vs. Madison decision. While I can sympathize with some of your concerns, that is long ago water over the dam and nothing is going to change that short of the US Supreme Court itself stating that they DO NOT have the power of Judicial Review. And the odds of that are better for 12 inches of snow this August in Key West.
 
j-mac said:
Here is the definition of a 'ponzi' scheme...How is it fundementally different?
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If you understood how your home, auto, and life insurance plans were different from a Ponzi scheme, you wouldn't have had to ask this question.
 
Does anyone object to a portion of S.S. to be diversified into private equity and REIT markets? I have been on the fence with this idea for quite some time. Reason be, the national security risks from investing S.S. funds into equity markets in a time when international capital mobility is at its highest outweigh any direct benefits. Also, such an action would give the federal government way to much power to manipulate.

Then there is the entire "voting rights" issue for various company boards.
 
Kushinator said:
Something interesting to note. Most recent actuarial models show that recipients on the higher income end tend to draw more from the SS fund than low income recipients for a rather obvious reason... they live much longer!
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They've spent more on health care during their lifetimes, and in their cushy, air-conditioned offices, they've not been exposed to the dust and fumes and other enviro-hazards that shorten lower-income lives. They go to the doctor more often in their senior years as well, so they are also a bigger drain on Medicare.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
They've spent more on health care during their lifetimes, and in their cushy, air-conditioned offices, they've not been exposed to the dust and fumes and other enviro-hazards that shorten lower-income lives. They go to the doctor more often in their senior years as well, so they are also a bigger drain on Medicare.
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Which is why i am against raising the age without means testing (which opens up another fairness debate).
 
haymarket said:
You seem to really be angry or hurt that some reason which you believe was given for Social Security is different than what you believe the program now does. I think its funny that you would put your faith into something like that.
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Are you saying that SS has not changed since 1935?

But I will tell you what I will do - why don't you just present the reasons the sponsors gave for Social Security in their own words and we can them compare it to the program that was instituted and we can see just what is what and if you have a point or not?

Sound fair?
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What? we should re debate the New Deal here? Today? Why don't we just stick to what is going on with SS today.


j-mac
 
Navy Pride said:
Hussein Obama just robbed 93,000,000,000 from SS to pay for the payroll tax holiday for 2012. The man is driving this country down the tubes.
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Economic stimulus in the form of tax incentives is a play right out of the supply side playbook. Why on earth would you have an issue with this?
 
j-mac said:
Contrabutions? It is a tax. Taxes are not contrabutions, they are taken by the force of government. And your answer is to take more of MY money? How much of what I earn through MY own hard work, is mine?
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Lesson for the piggies. The law requires employers to pay, on their own behalf and on the behalf of each of their employees. These amounts are NOT part of your actual wages. They are not in any way related to any sort of service that you provide. You have no legitimate claim or title to them whatsoever. The amounts are included in your gross pay only so that they can be deducted on your behalf and sent off to Washington. If SS were to go away, so would BOTH of those entries. That is, your gross pay would go down, while your net pay remained the same.
 
Cardinal Fang said:
Lesson for the piggies.
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"The Piggies"? What kind of F'd up crap is that to start out a reply to someone? I asked a legitimate question of how much of MY OWN hard earned money I should be allowed to keep, and you call me a pig?

The law requires employers to pay, on their own behalf and on the behalf of each of their employees. These amounts are NOT part of your actual wages.
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I am familiar thanks.

They are not in any way related to any sort of service that you provide.
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The employer is bound to pay a portion based on my employment with that company, and is not my employment to provide a service?

You have no legitimate claim or title to them whatsoever.
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Are they not made in my name?

The amounts are included in your gross pay only so that they can be deducted on your behalf and sent off to Washington.
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I think if private citizens do this to a business, it is called organized crime....

If SS were to go away, so would BOTH of those entries. That is, your gross pay would go down, while your net pay remained the same.
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Or, the business I work for would have the ability sans those taxes to actually raise my pay, just like some do when employees opt not to take the company offered health plans....Mine does that.

j-mac
 
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