Social Security Will Be Insolvent in 10 Years

Some minor adjustments can solve the problem:

1) Raise everything by one year - early retirement starts at 63 and full retirement at 68.

2) Raise the cap on earnings taxed to $175,000.

3) Shift the wasteful spending on SSDI over to SS. The disability program is the one most fraught with fraud and abuse.

.4) Lower welfare benefits for young, able-bodied adults with no young children in order to have enough money to pay full SS to senior citizens who worked their entire life,
 
S.S. has been insolvent since it started. There is no sealed box. The federal government can't stand to see money laying around unspent so the government started stealing from it from the moment the law was passed. LBJ finally made it official that FICA tax would be placed in the general fund and spent. So far incoming FICA tax has been able to keep up with outgoing Social Security payments but with the influx of millions of illegal aliens who don't pay into Social Security and will probably benefit when they get old enough (thanks to democrat policies) the whole system is bound to collapse.

It's always been in the General Fund. Eisenhower raided it to build the interstate highway system and on the Cold War. The fact is right wingers don't want to pay teh govt. back for all their welfare programs, so now they blame SS for the deficits they loved to create themselves, on top of all the massive 'too big to fail' scams since the 1960's and their 'free trade' scams, and ever larger bank and Wall Street bailouts. Obama's bailouts were merely continuations of George W.'s $3 trillion bailout agenda, on top of his covering for Enron's frauds and swindles that crushed countless small businesses while he sat on his ass grinning like a loon for 8 years. Your heroes helped pass Biden's 'infrastructure' scam as well as all kinds of log rolling and pork.
 
Ida May Fuller, the first SS recipient. She paid in $24.75. She collected however $22,888.92. It was a ponzi scheme from the very beginning.

Way too many people today think the money they've paid in was set aside for their retirement, not realizing the whole time that THEY were subsidizing the retirements of other people.
 
... we have had two solvency crises in the past — 1977 and 1983 — let’s see how legislators fixed the problem then. The first time, they simply raised the payroll tax rate by 25% and the maximum taxable wage base by 68%. Six years later, they switched course. They effectively cut benefits by raising the full retirement age from 65 to 67, phasing it in over four decades. So, those are the two basic options: raise taxes or cut benefits.

You could do similar things today. For example, to make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, legislators could raise the tax rate from 6.2% to 8.1%. According to current actuarial projections, this would fix the problem until 2095. So, it is fixable, but painful.

Alternatively, legislators could close three-quarters of the long-term deficit by immediately abolishing the maximum taxable wage base (currently $147,000), thus subjecting all wages to taxation. Or they could raise the full retirement age to 68. This would close one-seventh of the long-term actuarial deficit.

Legislators could also change the way benefits are adjusted for inflation. They are currently adjusted with the consumer price index. Some economists think this index overstates inflation. They suggest using an alternative index called the chained price index. If you switch to that index, you would solve one-fifth of the long-term deficit.




Either you raise taxes and/or you cut benefits. The GOP hate the 1st option and the democrats hate the 2nd. It seems to me that the only logical thing is to do some combination of both. Much depends on who is in the White House and which party controls Congress. And the thing is that our economy could be quite different by then, possibly in the throes of a recession/depression or even a war. Too bad we can't agree on what to do to address the problem now before it gets more expensive and difficult to fix.
 
... we have had two solvency crises in the past — 1977 and 1983 — let’s see how legislators fixed the problem then. The first time, they simply raised the payroll tax rate by 25% and the maximum taxable wage base by 68%. Six years later, they switched course. They effectively cut benefits by raising the full retirement age from 65 to 67, phasing it in over four decades. So, those are the two basic options: raise taxes or cut benefits.

You could do similar things today. For example, to make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years, legislators could raise the tax rate from 6.2% to 8.1%. According to current actuarial projections, this would fix the problem until 2095. So, it is fixable, but painful.

Alternatively, legislators could close three-quarters of the long-term deficit by immediately abolishing the maximum taxable wage base (currently $147,000), thus subjecting all wages to taxation. Or they could raise the full retirement age to 68. This would close one-seventh of the long-term actuarial deficit.

Legislators could also change the way benefits are adjusted for inflation. They are currently adjusted with the consumer price index. Some economists think this index overstates inflation. They suggest using an alternative index called the chained price index. If you switch to that index, you would solve one-fifth of the long-term deficit.




Either you raise taxes and/or you cut benefits. The GOP hate the 1st option and the democrats hate the 2nd. It seems to me that the only logical thing is to do some combination of both. Much depends on who is in the White House and which party controls Congress. And the thing is that our economy could be quite different by then, possibly in the throes of a recession/depression or even a war. Too bad we can't agree on what to do to address the problem now before it gets more expensive and difficult to fix.


Or wages rise with the inflation rates caused by 'free enterprise' flooding the country with hot money and businesses getting absorbed by monopolists and driving out competition and more hot money created by the junk bonds and over-priced stocks used to buy up competition.

Your 'solvency crisises' weren't caused by Social Security, they were caused by Wall Street and the financial sector.' Too Big To Fail' bailouts started in the mid 1960's, but your right wing propagandists won't ever tell you that.
 
I suspect it will just be a 30% cut to all our benefits. So if you were going to be getting $2000 a month it will be $1400.

Now you may not consider that "raising your taxes" but you can consider this. Since Reagan Republicans have been bankrupting our government by cutting rich people and corporate taxes, also defunding the IRS so they are powerless to go after guys like Trump when they commit tax fraud.

So they will be shifting the tax burden on to you from the days when those corporations and rich people paid their fair share. And remember, you defended all those tax breaks to the rich. It's your fault. And it's going to cost you.

I'll survive with $600 a month less for the rest of my life. Boy, that's a huge tax on us isn't it? I mean taking that much away from us middle class people? We should have never given the rich and corporations tax breaks knowing this was going to happen.

And, make you work until you are 70 instead of 67. You don't mind working 3 more years to pay for Trump's tax breaks do you? Of course not.

Corporate tax rates were also cut so severely that they went from representing over 33% of total federal tax receipts in 1951 to less than 9% in 1983
When the last massive rise in social security taxes happened in the 1980's, the then Congressional budget Office said that the increases would extend the viability until the 2070's. However, lost in that was that they said the economy would have 4% annual growth. It has not. We are like England was in the 19th century. Real slower growth and the United States overtook them because of it.
 
Or wages rise with the inflation rates caused by 'free enterprise' flooding the country with hot money and businesses getting absorbed by monopolists and driving out competition and more hot money created by the junk bonds and over-priced stocks used to buy up competition.

Your 'solvency crisises' weren't caused by Social Security, they were caused by Wall Street and the financial sector.' Too Big To Fail' bailouts started in the mid 1960's, but your right wing propagandists won't ever tell you that.
Progs were in control in the 1960's. We were still a rising nation as it peaked around then. The massive welfare state, the Viet Nam War and the Moon program took resources from the taxpayer even as the economy was booming. The hangover started in the 1970's. The bills came due. And the social welfare state ramped up with the diversity, affirmative action, feminism and what we now know as equity pushed as the law of the land. We bypass reason and generalize when we should be specific or vice versa when it suits us.
 
Progs were in control in the 1960's. We were still a rising nation as it peaked around then. The massive welfare state, the Viet Nam War and the Moon program took resources from the taxpayer even as the economy was booming. The hangover started in the 1970's. The bills came due. And the social welfare state ramped up with the diversity, affirmative action, feminism and what we now know as equity pushed as the law of the land. We bypass reason and generalize when we should be specific or vice versa when it suits us.

Wrong. JFK was a big fan of theTechnocrats of the 'Big Is Better' cult were big fans of doing away with the fair trade laws restraining chain stores and bank regulations and removing restraints on bankers and doing away with anti-trust enforcement, and they were on both side of the aisle, with people like JK Galbraith and Richard Hofstadter being in agreement with Milton Freidman, Robert Bork, and the Chicago School that competition was bad. What happened in the 1970's was the Watergate Babies, like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, for instance, joine with the GOP to get rid of the Wright Patman and other 'old timers' to get rid of the last New Deal restraints on loansharking, hot money, and joining Carter in the 'deregulation' fad, further undermining competition in all the major industries. In fact, if it weren't for the Viet Nam War 1966 would have been a major crash year, but the war spending pretty much kept employment high and the economy stable. Taxes went up because of big bank bailouts and the Penn Central fraud going public.

Your history is just wrong, which is the case with people who just get their slogans and memes from echo chambers. read a little broader; Democrats always have plenty of help from their Republican schoolmates and swindlers. The Reagan Myth is another giant load of horseshit 'history' the right wing peddles no end. Social Security is just a red herring, looted and plundered by the GOP as well as Democrats, so you're right the bill does come due, and Social Security holds all the IOU's that need to be paid back.
 
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Wrong. JFK was a big fan of theTechnocrats of the 'Big Is Better' cult were big fans of doing away with the fair trade laws restraining chain stores and bank regulations and removing restraints on bankers and doing away with anti-trust enforcement, and they were on both side of the aisle, with people like JK Galbraith and Richard Hofstadter being in agreement with Milton Freidman, Robert Bork, and the Chicago School that competition was bad. What happened in the 1970's was the Watergate Babies, like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, for instance, joine with the GOP to get rid of the Wright Patman and other 'old timers' to get rid of the last New Deal restraints on loansharking, hot money, and joining Carter in the 'deregulation' fad, further undermining competition in all the major industries. In fact, if it weren't for the Viet Nam War 1966 would have been a major crash year, but the war spending pretty much kept employment high and the economy stable. Taxes went up because of big bank bailouts and the Penn Central fraud going public.

Your history is just wrong, which is the case with people who just get their slogans and memes from echo chambers. read a little broader; Democrats always have plenty of help from their Republican schoolmates and swindlers. The Reagan Myth is another giant load of horseshit 'history' the right wing peddles no end.
The understanding of the Fiat Currency is nonexistent to most Americans. It's not like I have a major course in knowing it either. We lost control of it in 1971.
 
The understanding of the Fiat Currency is nonexistent to most Americans. It's not like I have a major course in knowing it either. We lost control of it in 1971.

Try 1962, with the creation of 'Certificates of Deposits' by Citibank, and an illegally formed 'market' for them while JFK's Fed looked the other way. That was the first hole in the dyke that broke the dam by 1970. This allowed small banks to 'sell' deposits to big banks, who then claimed those deposits as part of their own reserves and loaned them out, creating hot money, lots and lots of it. It was one of the factors that resulted in us having to go off the gold standard under Nixon.
 
Some minor adjustments can solve the problem:

1) Raise everything by one year - early retirement starts at 63 and full retirement at 68.

2) Raise the cap on earnings taxed to $175,000.

3) Shift the wasteful spending on SSDI over to SS. The disability program is the one most fraught with fraud and abuse.

.4) Lower welfare benefits for young, able-bodied adults with no young children in order to have enough money to pay full SS to senior citizens who worked their entire life,
It will be easier to print more money.
 
When the last massive rise in social security taxes happened in the 1980's, the then Congressional budget Office said that the increases would extend the viability until the 2070's. However, lost in that was that they said the economy would have 4% annual growth. It has not. We are like England was in the 19th century. Real slower growth and the United States overtook them because of it.
We have 10 million unfilled jobs in America. I assume a lot of them are low pay jobs. And we have 10 million immigrants that want in so they can work and pay social security taxes. I wonder what we should do.
 
If the democrats would stop acting like trophy wives buying up votes with handouts, the burden would be lifted
I won't always argue with you. Here is what we see here in Metro Detroit. Muslims/Arabs/Chaldeans really know how to game the system. Way too many of them are on disability and also work at their uncles party store. Free everything. Young healthy men and women. They must have arab doctors that approve them.
 
It will be easier to print more money.

Some people say that leads to inflation while others disagree. I think the amount of new money being printed will be so much that inflation WILL occur and could be crippling for the economy. IMHO, we're going to have to bite the bullet and come up with some kind of bipartisan agreement that resolves the problem or at least mitigates it.
 
Some minor adjustments can solve the problem:

1) Raise everything by one year - early retirement starts at 63 and full retirement at 68.

2) Raise the cap on earnings taxed to $175,000.

3) Shift the wasteful spending on SSDI over to SS. The disability program is the one most fraught with fraud and abuse.

.4) Lower welfare benefits for young, able-bodied adults with no young children in order to have enough money to pay full SS to senior citizens who worked their entire life,
Cut defense spending.
 

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