General Discussion
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(23,998 posts)h2ebits
(644 posts)+1
Moostache
(9,895 posts)Obviously the title needs a <sarcasm>...
I hate the fact that the powers that be not only stick to their austerity playbook not matter how many times they are called out on it and proven wrong, but also they just keep repeating the same old lies...makes me want to harm small furry animals and that's just not right.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Either the Federal government doesn't fund Social Security, or it's going to be providing it a lot of money in the near future? I guess it depends on whether repaying counts as "funding".
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)If we look at the books we will find that the SS account is several trillion in the blue while the WAR account is several trillion in the red. We need a war tax to repay the WAR account. SS is a distraction to not tax to repay for our wars.
By-the-way the Infrastructure account is about 2 trillion in the red also. Thanks to the DimSon.
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,638 posts)It's good to have someone who knows what's what chime in!
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)CaliforniaPeggy
(149,638 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)I'm talking about selling this to the larger audience.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)If I had, I'd be back on the Hill consulting with DCCC
FogerRox
(13,211 posts)4_TN_TITANS
(2,977 posts)Bush did precisely what Gore warned about in the 2000 campaign. Our SSI surplus was reduced to a pile of Treasury bonds. Why can no one in the MM communicate this?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Let me jump back: it wasn't awful in a world of adults: in that world it's actually a great idea. In the world where we have a Congress of sociopathic 9-year-olds, it was a bad idea.
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)The quoted message states in part:
Social Security is primarily a pay-as-you-go program. Current revenues (chiefly FICA taxes) are used to cover current expenses (chiefly payments to beneficiaries).
A pay-as-you-go program works fine if the basic demographics are fundamentally stable. Ours aren't stable, however, because of the baby boom (or, more precisely, the baby bust -- the decline in births that began in the early 1960s as the baby boom ended). Because this problem was foreseen, the boomers were taxed more than was necessary to maintain current payments, so that a trust fund could be built up to help cover their retirements.
The trust fund, however, serves only to make up the shortfall. Over the next 60 years, the principal source of each year's Social Security payments will continue to be that year's FICA tax revenues. The money in the trust fund alone would not fund Social Security for the next 60 years, but only for a few years (probably three or four but I haven't crunched the exact numbers).
This isn't a big deal because no one is talking about repealing the FICA tax while maintaining full Social Security benefits. Nevertheless, it doesn't help us to propagate misunderstandings about how the system works.