Posted on 07/14/2017 8:53:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The government is out today with its annual update of Social Security’s sick finances:
--The system is $12.5 trillion under water, up from $11.4 trillion a year ago.
--Absent law changes, checks to retirees will have to be chopped 23% beginning in 2035.
--To fix just the retirement pay program, Congress could kick up the payroll tax by 2.8 percentage points. Fixing Medicare’s disastrous finances would be in addition.
--The retirement operation is running an $86 billion annual deficit. That’s the difference between the money coming in from Social Security’s share of payroll taxes (12.4% of covered payroll) and the money going out in monthly checks and in overhead.
Ponzi? That’s too kind an interpretation. A Ponzi scheme has old investors being paid off with money raised from new ones. In this case there isn’t enough cash coming in from new players to pay off the old ones. The $86 billion shortfall is being covered in traditional federal fashion, by drawing on general tax revenues and by printing money.
The trustees of the Social Security system put the grim news in as positive light as they can. They cheerily note that “asset reserves” grew from $2,813 billion at the end of 2015 to $2,848 billion at the end of 2016.
But these “reserves” are not a pile of saved capital in the form of stocks, bonds and mortgages. Rather, they are a bookkeeping entry in which the government borrows money from the government, and the government pretends to have “income” by collecting interest from…the government.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I think it all started when it was either Nixon or Johnson who decided to crack into SS to pay for other things like the Vietnam war.
It’s too bad the dead politicians who participated in this Social Security scam decades ago can’t be publicly dug up, their carcasses mixed with rendering wastes, and tossed into some unnamed landfill.
Neither are the paid in cash day laborers who wire their money back HOME to Mexico.
They always find money for WELFARE, Medicaid, Illegals with College, Health Care, Congressional Vacations, Obama Vacations, ON and ON and ON, including sending pallets of CASH on Night Flights to IRAN.
It will be “fixed” with tax increases. Absolutely no other solution is politically viable. Bend over and grab ‘em.
Too many SSDI checks going out to people who are not really disabled.
I’m 63 and will be “retiring” at age 66. The reason I’m waiting is that due to life events I’m not going to go into, my SS is for the most part all I’ll have to live on. The good news is that my wife and I both turn 66 within a week of each other and I earned, during much of my later career, pretty close to the maximum under SS.
Add to that getting the house paid off and living in an area where the cost of living is REALLY low (rural Kentucky), and we can actually live VERY comfortably on SS alone. The few hundred a month here and there from other sources helps, and if necessary I can always pick up another IT contract, but I don’t know why I would.
And that’s because I found out that the way it’s set up we will pay ZERO income taxes, either state or federal. That alone is worth it. “Starve the beast” is my motto.
Good news is I probably won’t live much past 2035, if at all past. :-)
Oh, and regarding me “living off the system”, if I had put the same money I put into SS over my career into a simple Certificate of Deposit, I’d have a LOT more to draw from. The good news is that your SS can’t be taken in a divorce...
RE: Good news is I probably won’t live much past 2035, if at all past. :-)
I think we’ll see you in 2035 still posting at FR.... :)
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No, too many SS checks going out to pay Obummer’s Muzzie invaders that he shipped in by the millions.
This has to stop!
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Two other solutions:
Print money to pay which may cause inflation
Sell assets to make payments.
Goverment land, oil/ mineral rights
But, tut we were promised! Here is what was said back in 1964!
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
And here is where your money went. Read and weep!
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html#n4
I think we’ll see you in 2035 still posting at FR.... :)
We HAD enough money until Johnson started paying every whore who kept their illegitimate kid.
Cut foreign aid by 10%. Cut the military by .05%. Cut entitlements by 1%. There’s all the money you will ever need.
I do not expect to retire. It might happen, but I doubt it.
What do Rome, the British Empire, and now the US have in common? Empires that are too costly to maintain and besides that create a flow of people from the conquered lands. Until and unless the US gets back to being a nation with well-defined borders and a stable, productive citizenry we can't be saved as a nation.
How about removing the cap. Why not pay SS on all income, not just the first 130K...or whatever it is.
IMO, removing the cap WILL happen. It’s crappy economics, but it garners 70%+ approval in opinion polls.
The Tobin Tax on Wall Street transactions will also be done, because that again polls well.
If you work for someone, your employer may have other ideas. I found out the hard way.
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