Wow I didn't realize that social security taxes raises almost as much as individual income taxes.

[dkf]

Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2010 are $2.381 trillion, an estimated decrease of 11% from 2009.

$1.061 trillion – Individual income taxes
$940 billion – Social Security and other payroll tax
$222 billion – Corporation income taxes
$77 billion – Excise taxes
$23 billion – Customs duties
$20 billion – Estate and gift taxes
$22 billion – Deposits of earnings
$16 billion – Other

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget?wasRedirected=true

[hobbit709]

1. Except SS goes back to the ones that EARNED it.

[notesdev]

3. LOL

SS goes down the same rabbit hole as every other dollar sucked in by the government. The people paying in today who are younger than 50 or so are the ones who earned the money flowing into those accounts today, and I can assure you they will NOT get it back. It's mathematically impossible, unless that payback is made in hyperinflated dollars worth no more than the Weimar Deutschemark.

[hobbit709]

5. So I guess you won't be bothering to file for yours.

[notesdev]

6. It won't exist by the time that time comes

SS insolvency comes in 7 years.

I will reach retirement age (assuming they don't continue to increase that age) in over a quarter century from now.

I can do the math. I will get nothing back out of what is now taken from me under the guise of SS. Unless you are within a few years of retirement, you will not get anything back either.

[dawg]

9. That's what *they* want you to believe.

The actual trust fund balance is meaningless. Social Security is payable based on the full faith and credit of the U.S. Gov't., including its ability to issue other debt and to levy other taxes on this enormous economy.

It's only insolvent if *we the people* fall for their bullshit.

Paul Krugman has written much enlightening work about this issue. One might could make a case that there is a real problem with Medicare. But Social Security is not actually a problem unless we allow them to make it so.

[notesdev]

15. I don't have to "believe" anything

I can do the math. And the math says that promises made cannot be kept.

As those who bought into the housing bubble before it popped believing that "housing prices could never go down" (a belief far more widespread just a few years ago than belief today that SS will pay out on its promises) found out, you don't want to place your bets against it.

We're already seeing it happen in slow motion. Two years running now, zero COLA in the face of strong inflation in basic necessities and a decline in the value of the dollar. People are already getting less than what was promised to them. By the time it comes for a 40-year-old today to retire, "less" will be effectively if not literally zero.

This is the hangover from the consumerist stupor this country was drugged into, while the elites sucked all the wealth out of this country, replaced by worthless debt.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. The COLA rules never changed. No one is getting 'less than

promised' no one. You can feel free to show proof of your statement. Not one American has been promised an benefit that is actually delivered at a lower amount. Your statement is blatantly false.

[dkf]

42. There are no promises when it comes to Social Security. There is only current legislation.

"Because the Social Security program has operated on a largely pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) basis, the level of contributions of each generation of workers is not directly related to the benefits they will receive. Under a PAYGO plan, benefits are not based on the accumulation of individual contributions, as in a defined contribution plan, nor are annual contributions determined based on scheduled future benefits of current workers and beneficiaries, as in an advance-funded defined benefit plan. Rather, the combined amount of contributions from workers and employers needed to fund the system at any time has been largely determined by the total amount of benefits to be paid at that time. The internal rates of return depend on the contribution tax rates and Social Security benefit levels set by Congress. They do not in any significant way reflect the rate of interest on assets invested in the OASI and DI Trust Funds."

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html

[FreakinDJ]

33. Bush tried and FAILED to eleminate SSI

Once AARP got on the "Don't Mess with my SSI" RATpubliCONs enforce jumped off the Bush - "Lets Destroy SSI BandWagon" when Bush's popularity ratings were at an all time high.

If you think the Tea-Party has an ability to make noise, just wait and see what would happen if anyone tries to touch SSI

BTW: Your argument lacks

[sabrina 1]

58. I don't know where you are getting your information, but you couldn't

be more wrong. Please post something to back up these numbers. You are contradicting every respected Economist in the country, not to mention the SS Trustees AND the Congressional Budgetary committee.

[lumberjack_jeff]

65. You've mentioned "the math" several times.

Share it with us.

You're wrong, and I really dislike reading this sky is falling gibberish here.

[dkf]

17. You will get something if you can convince the kids to pay up.

If you can convince them they may get something when they too get old then you will be ok. Of course when their taxes go up and up and up to pay for the federal budget plus supporting an increasing number of elderly people with less workers they may revolt on you.

[notesdev]

21. What will they pay with?

Their food stamps? The non-check from the job they can't get, that got offshored?

Sorry, these kids have nothing. Student loans already has a first lien on most of their future economic surplus.

I unlike those who came before me have principles, and one of the most important of those is not to do to the next guy what I resent having experienced from the guy before me. I will not steal from the generation that follows my own and I will staunchly oppose any attempts to do so.

When they revolt I will be their ally, not their opponent.

I know you're just ribbing here, but the topic of stealing a younger generation's future to feed the vanity and material desires of the older generation really makes my blood boil.

[dkf]

23. Yeah I feel bad for the kids too.

And I don't even have any. This generation really has eaten us into a hole. I know many who think we can all retire and just let the elites pay for everything but I don't think that is feasible.

[eShirl]

26. tax the rich and cut back on our World Police duties

that ought to do it

[bettyellen]

66. "resent" "steal" "vanity and material desires" Ypur post is 95% emotional ovand 5% reality based

just like the conservatives have taught you how to think.
Sad reading this here,

[Tesha]

27. He is one of "the kids" -- does it sound like he wants to "pay up"? (NT)

[Bluenorthwest]

30. I'm not one of 'the kids' and i have heard that whole line of crap

for my entire life, and the fact is that all of my Uncles who ranted on about ponzi schemes and Roosevelt are all either drawing SS into their 80's and 90's or are dead having drawn it for years. Cousin Bob used to get a physical check and his son would show it to him and say "here's another check from Roosevelt's ponzi scheme, Pop." Bot cashed them all, each and every one.

[dkf]

35. After the surplus runs out SS taxes will jump from 12.4% to 17.01% then increase every year.

That is when the kids revolt.

"Under the Increased Payroll Tax scenario, payroll-tax rates are assumed to be increased as needed beginning in the year of trust-fund exhaustion so that present-law scheduled benefits would always be payable in each year. The payroll-tax rate would begin to increase from the present law amount of 12.4 percent beginning in 2042. The payroll-tax rate increases to 17.01 percent in 2043 and continues to increase year-by-year until reaching 18.32 percent in 2078. It is expected that, under this scenario, further increases in the payroll tax rate would be needed after 2078 due to continuing increases in life expectancy."

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html

[TacticalPeek]

43. Not true. After the surplus runs out, nothing happens unless Congress and President enact new law.

You are referencing an assumption used to project different scenarios and calculate possible rates of return.

There are no SS tax increases scheduled and your statement is false.

[dkf]

47. The social security administration only has the authority to use funds paid into the system or it's

Bonds. This is why Reagan engineered a surplus owed to the SS fund.

If the funds ran out of assets, it would need to be approved as part of the budget and may or may not be approved.

*oops corrected for content*

[TacticalPeek]

51. So what? Your statement that SS taxes would jump to "17.01% then increase every year" is false.

Demonstrably.

Take it back.

[dkf]

54. It would have to jump to 17.01% or benefits would be cut or congress would have to add

To social security as part of the budget. If it gets into congresses hands it would be a political football every year to see if the extra would be funded. If not, there would have to be some sort of formula to cut benefits.

It would be like the unemployment extensions, waiting til December to see who gets what. Sounds like fun right?

[TacticalPeek]

57. No, not even that is true. For example, you don't even mention eliminating the FICA cap? Why not?

And even if nothing at all is done, then when the trust fund is exhausted the SSA will still be able to pay 75% of benefits due indefinitely. Indefinitely, yes.

There is nothing to panic over. We should not "fix" Social Security because it is not broken. We should strengthen it with the same foresight as our predecessors.

[sabrina 1]

60. SS has three sources of income.

It is the most solvent program ever and still is. Where are you getting this stuff from?

[sabrina 1]

63. The surplus is not about to run out. It is in fact expected to double

by 2023 raising it to over 4 trillion dollars. That means the interest rates will also increase, another source of income for SS. That interest is paid in full, as it was this year, and in years where there is not enough money from income, as has happened often in the past, SS's other sources cover that shortfall. This was one of those years, and yet, SS STILL ENDED UP WITH A SURPLUS.

You can go back 40 years and read similar doomsday 'scenarios' put forth by the right who have always misunderstood SS, until they are ready to collect it of course, calling it an 'entitlement' program. This fund was earned by the people, it is not a government fund, it is the people's fund.

The only way SS will not be there is if Democrats cave to Republicans, which is looking increasingly likely and if that happens, they can kiss their party goodbye. This is a fight that requires every single Democrat on board, led by the President. It always has been.

[notesdev]

53. Not a kid anymore I'm afraid

I'm old enough to have seen it start but they didn't really perfect the scam until a little later on.

But I'm young enough to remember 20' foot tall steel fences being erected outside my high school. The kids don't remember anything but.

I'm old enough to remember them just getting started mass industrializing the student debt industry. They got me a little bit, but not nearly as bad as those poor naive kids who were to come along just a few years later.

I'm old enough to remember an America where kids were celebrated for their potential, not exploited for their potential to carry debt. And I'm young enough that had I not been such a square peg for their round holes, they probably would have sucked me all the way into it like they did my contemporaries and those who have come after.

It's really cruel what is done to kids these days. Under the guise of getting an education (and few really do), students now get a debt load that is as or even more expensive than buying a house!

We have become a predatory society. I'm the prey who escaped before the predators mastered their hunting technique. I do not know if I would have come out of it as well as I did, were I born even three or four years later.

[Doremus]

48. You do know you're spouting rightwing talking points verbatim?

"SS insolvency comes in 7 years."

May I remind you, you're posting on the DEMOCRATIC Underground. We don't take kindly to the robotic recitation of nonsensical spew. Please educate yourself. Thanks.

[jtown1123]

50. bless you for this

[bettyellen]

69. exactly, they are scaring the shit out of younger folk with this, and they have no clue that this

crap has been around, in one form or another since SS began. No ne who remembers the recession in the 70s is falling for all this doomsday shit.

[Autumn]

76. Thank you , we all know

where those talking points come from. And people follow them hook line and sinker.

[sabrina 1]

55. That is a rightwing scare tactic. SS is solvent way into the future

Even the worst estimates declare it solvent with full benefits paid to all who have earned them up to 2037. That is the conclusion reached in this year's annual report and the most conservative estimate. The Congressional Budget office sets that date further into the future, approx. 2043. And that is without doing anything. Without touching it, even after that, 75% of all benefits will be paid for the next 75 years.

There is NO crisis in SS, in fact the surplus in the trust fund, if nothing at all is done, will double by 2023.

You are buying the lies. SS will be there for anyone working today when they retire. UNLESS you decide to accept the lies being told and accept that the Government can steal from the Trust Fund and not pay it back. If you accept that, then you accept that U.S. Treasury Bonds are worthless, which means the country cannot pay any of its debtors and we are finished.

I cannot believe we see these lies on this board, over and over again. I can only conclude that it means the Democratic Party is planning to go along with the decades long battle by Republicans to cut SS benefits, and/or raise the Retirement Age recommended by Insane Republican anti-SS and anti-working class members of the Deficit Commission that Obama stated in the campaign, he would never set up.

[lumberjack_jeff]

61. "mathematically impossible" = fail

The US economy could absolutely repay its debt to Social Security, and it will, unless the lackeys for the rich intervene on their behalf.

[bettyellen]

71. isn;t it frightening how the rich are using the young with their doomsday scenarios. Im sorry but

these resentful kids with no sense of history and their doomsday histronics, it reinds me way too much of how Reagan got swept in after the recssion in the seventies.
Many seem to becomng "fiscal conservatives" resentful of people who "got theirs" inly in their fevered imaginations. No sense of hstory, or acknowledgement of the fact that their are boom bust cycles to the economy that can easily change everything. They are angry- understandably but - they react by looking for someone to blame.Republicans have gven them a target and they are taking tha bait. Out of short sighted personal sefishness, Just like the Teabaggers, scary and ignorant. I think the lack of jobs right now is turning a lot of these kids into republicans. Calling retirees SS payments a nod to vanity. What swill. And baseless.

[Motown_Johnny]

70. or some other source of revenue is added to supplement these taxes

such as import taxes on goods manufactured outside the U.S.

[dkf]

4. Actually it runs more like a ponzi scheme.

The funds that come in are used to pay out recipients, except the surplus which the government uses to fund everything else.

[jtown1123]

68. This is why Social Security is NOT a ponzi scheme...that is a right wing talking point:

http://www.ncpssm.org/news/archive/le_ponzi_scheme_wt_2409/

Also:

“Anyone who tells you Social Security is a Ponzi scheme either doesn’t understand what a Ponzi scheme is or their mother’s didn’t teach them not to fib. This myth is a favorite of conservatives who just hate the idea of social insurance in general. The Social Security Administration has a good history describing why this is nonsense.

Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system with the contributions of today’s workers going to today’s retirees or into the reserve to pay benefits to future retirees. The ratio of workers to retirees has changed over time, but unless this nation allows the system to be abolished, there will never be a time of no workers paying into the system. The most recent report of the Social Security Board of Trustees forecasts that even with no changes in the system, reserves will last through 2041 and even after that, 75% of promised benefits could be paid with incoming payroll taxes.

And don’t give any credence to the nonsensical comparison that in 1940 there were 40 workers to each retiree and today it is only three to one. Of course, there were fewer beneficiaries. 1940 was the first year a benefit was paid so millions of then-retired workers didn’t have the opportunity to contribute payroll taxes and earn benefits. Many of those ineligible for benefits in 1940 then relied on public assistance or their children to survive their retirement years. Hardly the “good old days” those who hate Social Security should be so eager for us to return to.”

via: http://www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow/?p=345

[kentuck]

77. If they change the "pay as you go sytem" to "borrow as you go"...

they will be able to destroy it. Otherwise, it is there for the people so long as they pay into it. If the government chooses to borrow it for the general fund, it will be backed up by the good faith of the government. That will not necessarily be the case if they borrow the money, as they plan on doing with the 2% payroll tax cut. That is not the people's money they are borrowing.

[jtown1123]

80. Well, the whole payroll tax holiday debacle does eff things up royally.

This is what they wanted to do all along.

[Creative]

16. SS nothing more and a ponzi scheme that transfers wealth from the young to the old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

[fascisthunter]

44. social security is a Ponzi Scheme?

[jtown1123]

52. haha you posted wikipedia as an authority. Another right wing talking point.

[Creative]

75. Talking point...?

No, it's just a matter of applying the principles of mathematics and acknowledging the facts of reality.

[jtown1123]

78. SS is not a ponzi scheme. Take that right wing talking point to the heritage & Cato

discussion threads.


http://www.ncpssm.org/entitledtoknow/?p=345

[jtown1123]

79. From the late columnist, Saul Friedman:

http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2010/11/gray-matters-social-security-the-anti-ponzi-scheme.html

This ponzi scheme meme is a Republican scare tactic. Please remember what site you are on.

[Fumesucker]

2. Which is why SS is extremely regressive..

[DURHAM D]

7. No it isn't.

Its progressive on the payout amounts.

[Fumesucker]

20. The discussion started by the OP is about *taxation* not payouts..

SS taxation is highly regressive thanks to the income cap.

[Little Star]

8. explain, please.

[Fumesucker]

18. The taxes raised by SS are almost as much as raised by the individual income taxes..

And yet there is a cap to the amount that can be taxed by SS, something that doesn't exist for the income taxes.

Clearly the low wage earners are paying more in SS than the very high ones else SS taxes wouldn't raise nearly as much as the individual income tax.

[Little Star]

40. Now I get it. Thanks for explaining.

[dawg]

11. A regressive tax that pays for ...

a progressive benefit. On the balance, a good deal for the American people. Eliminating the payroll cap while keeping the benefit formula unchanged (or only giving a slightly increased benefit to those who would pay more) would probably make the whole thing solvent until well after the Eastern Seaboard is flooded from rising ocean levels.

[The Magistrate]

12. Exactly, Sir

[Fumesucker]

19. It's my opinion that the payroll cap might be raised slightly but will never be eliminated..

So SS taxes will remain highly regressive.

I'm aware of the progressive nature of SS benefits but the taxation for the program remains regressive thanks to the cap.

[newfie11]

10. and in 2 years everyone will have fit about adding the back

it is the me/now generation

[Creative]

13. Nearly half of all Americans pay $0 income taxes, but no one is exempted

from paying SS taxes.

[w4rma]

14. You are exempted if all of your income comes from capital gains. (nt)

[Creative]

22. That is not true.

Bracket Short Term Long Term

10% 10% 0%
15% 15%
25% 25% 15%
28% 28%
33% 33%
35% 35%

[ieoeja]

39. He was talking about Social Security, not Income.

If your income is solely from investment, then you pay no social security tax.

[TacticalPeek]

24. This thread has - surprise - attracted a great deal of misinformation.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010


Suitable For Lamination

by digby


Do yourself a favor and print this out. Or memorize it. Read it at least. It is written by Paul N. Van de Water, a Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where he specializes in Medicare, Social Security, and health coverage issues:

In a new paper, I’ve tried to correct some of the misinformation that critics of Social Security have been spreading about the program.

Here are the facts. Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program. People earn retirement, survivors, and disability benefits by making payroll tax contributions during their working years. Those taxes and other revenues are deposited in the Social Security trust funds, and all benefits and administrative expenses are paid out of the trust funds. The amount that Social Security can spend is limited by its payroll tax income plus the balance in the trust funds.

The Social Security trustees — the official body charged with evaluating the program’s long-term finances — project that Social Security can pay 100 percent of promised benefits through 2037 and about three-quarters of scheduled benefits after that, even if Congress makes no changes in the program. Relatively modest changes would put the program on a sound financial footing for 75 years and beyond.

Nonetheless, some critics are attempting to undermine confidence in Social Security with wild and blatantly false accusations. They allege that the trust funds have been “raided” or disparage the trust funds as “funny money” or mere “IOUs.” Some even label Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” after the notorious 1920s swindler Charles Ponzi. All of these claims are nonsense.

Every year since 1984, Social Security has collected more in payroll taxes and other income than it pays in benefits and other expenses. (The authors of the 1983 Social Security reform law did this on purpose in order to help pre-fund some of the costs of the baby boomers’ retirement.) These surpluses are invested in U.S. Treasury securities that are every bit as sound as the U.S. government securities held by investors around the globe; investors regard these securities as among the world’s very safest investments.

Investing the trust funds in Treasury securities is perfectly appropriate. The federal government borrows funds from Social Security to help finance its ongoing operations in the same way that consumers and businesses borrow money deposited in a bank to finance their spending. In neither case does this represent a “raid” on the funds. The bank depositor will get his or her money back when needed, and so will the Social Security trust funds.

As far back as 1938, independent advisors to Social Security firmly endorsed the investment of Social Security surpluses in Treasury securities, saying that it does “not involve any misuse of these moneys or endanger the safety of these funds.”

Moreover, Social Security is the “polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme,” says the man who quite literally wrote the book about Ponzi’s famous scam, Boston University professor Mitchell Zuckoff. The Social Security Administration’s historian has a piece on this topic as well.

Unlike the frauds of Ponzi — and, more recently, Bernard Madoff — Social Security does not promise unrealistically large financial returns and does not require unsustainable increases in the number of participants to remain solvent. Instead, for the past 75 years it has provided a foundation that workers can build on for retirement as well as social insurance protection to families whose breadwinner dies and workers who become disabled.



See how simple that is?


.
digby 10/05/2010 09:00:00 PM Comments (55)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/suitable-for-lamination-why-social.html

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/social-security-sense-and-nonsense/

It really is that simple, which in my book casts a real shadow on attempts to obfuscate, bluster and mislead.

[Fumesucker]

25. It remains to be seen whether the funds borrowed by the government from SS taxes will be repaid..

A lot of us think we're seeing the beginnings of a movement in DC by the politicians to at least partially renege on repaying those borrowed funds.

Now those of us who think this may be mistaken but I don't think the fear of such a renege is totally unjustified.

[TacticalPeek]

29. No evidence.

Zero.

Therefore, this amounts to irresponsible speculation, if not disinformation.

In what safer instrument than a U.S. Treasury security is your excess disposable income invested?

[Fumesucker]

31. Obama's deficit commission expressly addressed SS benefit cuts..

A move that was out of the purview of the commission and they had no reason to speak on SS at all.

Just because something has been safe in the past does not necessarily mean it will remain safe in the future.

[TacticalPeek]

32. Not responsive.

Your remark was about the U.S. government reneging on its debt, and it remains totally unsubstantiated.

[Fumesucker]

36. How many times in the past has a SS payroll tax "holiday" been enacted?

[TacticalPeek]

38. I don't think "not responsive" means what you think it means.

For example, it does not mean "change the subject".

Or, are you tacitly withdrawing your spurious claim?

[Fumesucker]

41. Don't want to answer the question, eh?

I din't think you would..

The answer is zero, the SS payroll tax "holiday" is a unique event to date.

I and quite a few other people think it portends an attempt by politicians in DC to renege on paying back the trillions that have been borrowed from the SS trust fund.

Note that I'm not saying this is a done deal, I'm saying that a lot of us think this, I can speak of what I think without making "spurious" claims because it is truly what I think.

[Bluenorthwest]

34. To live in fear is A:WAYS unfustified. Do not do it.

I like your posts. But what you are saying in this one is not at all like what others are saying in the thread. To say 'we should watch the Republicans like hawks so they do not screw us' is one thing, but there are people on this thread who are pushing falsehoods and hyperbolic statements in a frame of being insightful. They are not saying even 'have fear' they are saying 'you are doomed, it is done, there is no money' and they are simplistic, fear mongering and incorrect. Much of their 'fact' is opinion, and nothing more.
I'm an old man, some say. Every argument foisted here by the fear mongers is an argument I have heard my entire life. Fearful righties shouting about Social Security Scam. The younger shouters on the thread mention FDR less than the older shouters from my childhood, but it was I think the John Birch Society that was so strident about no one ever getting the money they paid in and all of that, they had bill boards and all. In the 1960's. I had relatives who shouted about SS for decades, then drew it for decades, and never did they say 'gee, i guess I was wrong I did get my benefits'.
Roosevelt! Commmies! Ponzi! Scam!
None of this is new. None of it has even been reworked for the times. Much of what the fear mongers post sounds like it comes from that record Ronald Reagan made about commies and Medicare. Right wing pap. Tired, retreaded, right wing pap.

[Fumesucker]

37. Eh, I would add Democrats to the group that needs to be watched like hawks..

Only Nixon could go to China after all.

Too many Democrats these days talk and think very much like Republicans.

[Bluenorthwest]

46. Sure, why not add the Democrats? This does not change a

thing that I said. Add the Greens and the Independents too. Still, all I said is true. And the Party id of the the people you wish to fear is about the least important thing I typed. I tried.

[Fumesucker]

49. It is only natural to fear people who have great power over you..

Anyone who doesn't fear the politicians is astoundingly naive.

I'm not scared for myself so much but I have grandkids that I care about more than my own life, they will be paying for the folly of our politicians long after I'm gone.

I can't get my daughter or son in law to pay attention to what's going on, they are far too wrapped up in Facebook and Football and the minutia of making a living these days. It is only those of us who have the time and inclination to pay attention to politics and politicians that have even an inkling of a clue what's in the cards for our society, it also helps if you are somewhat a student of history as well. As Mark Twain once quipped, history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme.

[sabrina 1]

67. It is unjustified. What does 'full and credit of the U.S. Government'

mean? The American people are, like others the Government has borrowed from, debtors. Unless the U.S. collapses completely, the government MUST pay its debtors and cannot single out the American people to default on.

[Fumesucker]

72. I envy you your naivete.. I wish I could be so trusting..

Apparently you missed the SS payroll tax "holiday" that was recently enacted for the first time in the history of the program, as well as White House spokesman Gibbs mentioning that Obama was going to "work with Republicans on entitlement reform and deficit reduction".

Combine those two items with Obama's deficit commission talking about cutting SS recently and it makes me worry.

Of course if you are a military contracting corporation you have nothing to worry about, your income does not fall under the rubric of "entitlements", only old and disabled folks need have concern.

[sabrina 1]

74. Well, I AM worrired about this administration's actions and words

regarding SS. Also seeing people on boards like this buying into the lies about SS, is a concern. But outside of that, separating the issue from the politics, SS IS solvent. And if this administration joins Republicans in the beginning of the destruction of the program, I believe it will also destroy the Democratic Party.

I am hoping that Congressional Dems will stand up to this WH. They are in the minority now. From what we have been told over the past four years, the minority party has more power than the majority. So, we'll see.

[fascisthunter]

45. thank you

[hansberrym]

56. Well SS doesn't promise unrealistic gains anymore(chuckle), but it did at the

start of the program(the first beneficiaries got super rates of return, but rates of return have fallen ever since and will go negative for many in 2035 or so) and it has raised premiums repeatedly to for stall inability to payback depositors. Granted a ponzi scheme can't do that, ponzi schemes rely completely on trust/trickery as they have no power to compel compliance, but that point of difference should not make one feel better about SS.

Unlike a ponzi scheme SS will continue even after the spell has worn off and people realize they were duped. How happy do you think retirees will be in 25 years or sooner when they get only 75 cents on the dollar? How likely will younger workers be to support a program that for sure will not provide them a positive return?


And why on earth did Obama go along with the payroll tax holiday scheme which will move up the time frame when SS will not be able to pay full benefits? My guess is he is gaming to bring the crisis into view so he can take steps to remove the income caps(w/o increasing payouts accordingly) and thus "save' the program by destroying it.


Just what are the relatively modest changes mentioned in the article? (hint: they convert SS into a welfare program in order to hide the mismanagement. They do not save the program, they change it fundamentally -hardly "modest" changes)

(edited for spelling)

[TacticalPeek]

64. Negative rate of return in 2035? Would you please post a link for that?

I do not see it at the link dkf posted above, and in fact see otherwise.

I guess there could be a situation that worked out to that, but do you have a link to somewhere at ssa.gov showing that please? TIA.

[lumberjack_jeff]

59. So now you'll stop with the "working class don't pay enough taxes" rhetoric? n/t

[TBF]

62. I think she posts as she watches FAUX news. nt

[fascisthunter]

81. no shit...

[leftstreet]

82. +1

[Angry Dragon]

73. The rich don't need SS

so we might as well get rid of it......