CBO: Social Security to run permanent deficits

Yurt said:
i believe i have an understanding of what privatization means, but would appreciate if you could tell me what you think it means and why the left won't go for it
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Privatization means that the control of the money comes out of the hands of government and goes into the hands of the citizens.

In my opinion, we should have separate individual accounts with a few limited investment options.... Treasury bonds, Wilshire 5000 Index and maybe the EAFE Index (or some exposure to non-US markets)

The reason I say the left won't go for it, is because they have consistently fought against it in the past. They use exaggerations like 'if we had invested EVERYTHING in the market in late 2008, the money would be gone, thus privatization is bad'.
 
NigelTufnel said:
Raising the retirement age is fucking stupid. It's already schedule to bump up to 67. That's not too old if you job invovles sitting at a desk and typing on a computer, but if you job involves any physical labor at all 67 is pretty fucking old. It's not surprising that the people proposing raising the retirement age (politicians and pundits) have exactly the types of jobs you can do well past you ought to.

Personally, I think the retirement age should be lowered with a sliding benefit scale such that the earlier you retire, the lower your monthly benefits. It would help out a great deal with the unemployed close to retirement folks that have very limited prospects of ever working again.
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1) It should not be lowered

2) There already IS a sliding scale. Take a look at your SS statement sometime. It provides you with the PIA for age 62, 66 (or 67 depending on your age) and 70. At 62 you get roughly 75% of your full bene. It ratchets up to FRA benes at 66. For each year after 66 it increases about 8% per year (which is a pretty good incentive to wait)
 
Superfreak said:
Must talk about Palin
Must talk about Palin
Must talk about Palin

That is pretty much the line of thought from the left

Must talk about spending
Must talk about spending
Must talk about spending

and the above is the one track of the Reps.
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I can see why the right doesnt want anyone talking about Palin anymore.

If she would stop seeking the spotlight then no one would talk about her.

Maybe the right should tell her to shut up because she is embarssing you.

Is the right now ready to cut military spending after all these years?

If they are not then they are just talking in circles
 
Damn Yankee said:
What was the life expectancy relative to the retirement age when the system was created?
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Ball park... 64

Thus the system was created with the expectation that on average 50% would need SS, the other 50% would not. Which was a good idea considering back then it was predominantly men who went to work and paid into the system.

The system was not designed to deal with an average life expectancy of 77, though with many households being dual income now, it has eased the burden on the system. The problem then becomes generational.

When you have a large portion of the population tied into one generation (baby boomers) with subsequent generations being much smaller, you end up with a problem.

That said... the echo boomers are the largest generation, exceeding even the baby boomers. The oldest of the echo's is in the work force now, the middle portion are in high school/college with the youngest portion in Jr High.

As this demographic slides full force into the work force it should alleviate the burden of the baby boomers and with a few tweaks to the system now, that will allow SS to move forward.

SS fixes.... There really are about four options

1) Raise the benefit age from 66/67 to 69

2) Lower benefit payments

3) Raise taxes on all SS

4) Create doughnut (this number can be higher if privatization is included)

The first three are not good options.
 
Superfreak said:
SS fixes.... There really are about four options

1) Raise the benefit age from 66/67 to 69

2) Lower benefit payments

3) Raise taxes on all SS

4) Create doughnut (this number can be higher if privatization is included)

The first three are not good options.
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I don't see anything wrong with option 1. SS is a promise that the government should keep, and as you pointed out, the promise was to pay benefits to people who had lived more than one year over the life expectancy. I think raising it one year, say every third year until its solvent would be politically palatable if sold correctly.
 
evince said:
I can see why the right doesnt want anyone talking about Palin anymore.

If she would stop seeking the spotlight then no one would talk about her.

Maybe the right should tell her to shut up because she is embarssing you.

Is the right now ready to cut military spending after all these years?

If they are not then they are just talking in circles
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Please, the woman "enjoys" an exaggerated celebrity due to the left being obsessed with finding a "face" for what they want to attack. Plenty of celebrities of more value get less coverage while they too seek the spotlight.

This is a choice, and they do it because people like you want to hear what nutty thing she's done stretched beyond all levels of proportion and exaggerated so you can say, "They're all like that, you know." and feel better about yourself. This gives them a guaranteed ratings generator. All they have to do is take a clip, maybe she wrote something on her hand, maybe she's talking about magazines again, maybe it's whining about climbing a rock wall, but any clip pretty much will do... They put it on the air and have Matthews tell you what to think about it.
 
Damn Yankee said:
I don't see anything wrong with option 1. SS is a promise that the government should keep, and as you pointed out, the promise was to pay benefits to people who had lived more than one year over the life expectancy. I think raising it one year, say every third year until its solvent would be politically palatable if sold correctly.
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While I agree that would be a fix in terms of making SS solvent, it is not a good option for the reason Nigel brought up. If you have a manually intensive job, odds are you started that job around the age of 18-21. Doing that for more than 50 years is not realistic.

Relatively speaking, SS is not that hard to fix given the echo's will be in the work force and hitting their peak earning years in about ten years. Create the doughnut as I mentioned, keep the taxes on the first $106,800.... let it slide on earnings between that and $500k, then start it up again for employees only.

As for the promise... yes, that was the promise originally, but it has morphed into much more than that over the subsequent 7.5 decades.
 
Superfreak said:
While I agree that would be a fix in terms of making SS solvent, it is not a good option for the reason Nigel brought up. If you have a manually intensive job, odds are you started that job around the age of 18-21. Doing that for more than 50 years is not realistic.

Relatively speaking, SS is not that hard to fix given the echo's will be in the work force and hitting their peak earning years in about ten years. Create the doughnut as I mentioned, keep the taxes on the first $106,800.... let it slide on earnings between that and $500k, then start it up again for employees only.

As for the promise... yes, that was the promise originally, but it has morphed into much more than that over the subsequent 7.5 decades.
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The guy who's 63 and still doing manual labor can take less of his benes earlier, as he can do now.

You're doughnut concept would mean that a productive employee pays double. How is that fair?
 
Damn Yankee said:
The guy who's 63 and still doing manual labor can take less of his benes earlier, as he can do now.

You're doughnut concept would mean that a productive employee pays double. How is that fair?
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Taking less earlier has large consequences over the long term. Unless an individual believes their health will cause them to die prior to age 78, it is a detriment financially to take benefits early. (the breakeven age is about 77.6 years)

The productive employee doesn't pay double. He pays the tax on income up to 106,800, doesn't pay taxes on income from 106,800 to 500k, then pays the tax on income over $500k.
 
Superfreak said:
Taking less earlier has large consequences over the long term. Unless an individual believes their health will cause them to die prior to age 78, it is a detriment financially to take benefits early. (the breakeven age is about 77.6 years)

The productive employee doesn't pay double. He pays the tax on income up to 106,800, doesn't pay taxes on income from 106,800 to 500k, then pays the tax on income over $500k.
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Yes it does, but in this case we're talking about some guy who's in relatively poor health, and who made relatively poor career choices.

You're taxing the productive employee at a higher percentage than the less productive one. again, how is that fair?

In order to be fair, a policy must not be arbitrary. Raising the retirement age is not arbitrary while increasing taxes on some individuals obviously is.
 
evince said:
I can see why the right doesnt want anyone talking about Palin anymore.

If she would stop seeking the spotlight then no one would talk about her.

Maybe the right should tell her to shut up because she is embarssing you.

Is the right now ready to cut military spending after all these years?

If they are not then they are just talking in circles
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You're such a pathetic no-nothing....
Sarah Palin seeking the spotlight? What crap....she's only in the spotlight on two shows....

Olbermann first mentioned Palin on his show July 1, 2008, when his guest, conservative columnist William Kristol, recommended that McCain make her his vp choice. Since then, he talked about the former governor of Alaska in a total of 320 separate segments during his former MSNBC show, according to data compiled by LexisNexis. That's at least one story about Palin for every two episodes. The ex-governor who has become a lightning rod for left-wing criticism was such a frequent target of Olbermann's that the news of his Countdown show being canceled had one blogger joking: "It's Sarah Palin's fault. I'm sure she's behind this!"

But if the attention Olbermann gave to the diminutive and perky hockey mom from Wasilla sounds excessive, think again. LexisNexis indicates that MSNBC's Chris Matthews has reported on her during a whopping 420 segments of his Hardball show since she burst onto the scene as McCain's running mate two months after Kristol's Countdown appearance.

Now that one bonehead got the axe, at least we'll hear a little less of her....and that could only make Palin happy....

And No! We're not ready to cut military spending....the troops deserve the very best we can provide...they've earned it...and their lives depend on it...and protecting this country is the MOST IMPORTANT DUTY of the government....
 
What the left needs to understand about SS is that it will keep growing in a disproportionate way compared to other gov't spending. If you put it in a pie chart, it will keep eating up more & more of the pie, leaving less & less for so many other programs & benefits. The question that needs to be asked is, is preserving SS as a gov't program worth sacrificing so many other programs and benefits?

When you factor in that SS could actually work much better as a private program, it's pretty much a no brainer.

SS is unsustainable. Exponential population growth, COI increases and life expectancies that may rise to triple digits in the next half century....
 
bravo said:

And No! We're not ready to cut military spending....the troops deserve the very best we can provide...they've earned it...and their lives depend on it...and protecting this country is the MOST IMPORTANT DUTY of the government....
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Bravo, that's absurd. We HAVE to cut the military, and it's disingenuous to present cutting it as a "you're against the troops" position.

You are no different than those who view SS as a sacred cow that can't be tampered with.
 
Schadenfreude said:
cola has not gone up for two years
Thats how Democrats take care of seniors
also, the better well of are living longer but the poor rarely make it to 65 or much beyond
You were supposed to die before retirement age from the very beginning.
however, the system is broken because it is the 3rd rail of politics and and ss and medicare taxes (or should i say insurance payments) have not been raised to compensate for the potential shortfall - not to mention that the 'trust fund' keeps getting raided
There is no "trust fund, you dolt
Not been raised? They've been eliminated altogether for now, moron
all of the deferrals or passing reforms to later and later generations has finally caught up to the politicians and they are shitting bricks

the major problem with ss was when lbj stole the ss money to help pay for the vietnam war and the system passed from funded to pay as you go

then bush added unfunded prescription coverage to medicare
true, and now medicare has been cut by Dems to fund another foolish wet dream called Obamacare.
additionally, the iraq and afghanistan wars are unfunded - both are major drains on the treasury
true again....among thousands of other expenditures...Legislatures big paychecks, extravagant perks and outrageous pensions.
the banks precipitated this crisis but it was on the way
Banks had nothing to do with it...that ain't even logical spin.

bummer
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.,
 
Means test SS, raise the retirement age. Kids born today are going to live into their hundreds. We cannot have a system that actually cares for people longer than they worked. The life expectancy during the years of 1959-61 was only 69.9 years in 2003 it was 77.5 and it is 78 or 79 right now. We are now paying people to be retired for one have to three quarters of the time they worked, and the boomers aren't dying at the rates their parents and grandparents did. My dad OWNS a house worth over 400k, he has a considerable amount in savings and a 401k that while it took a hit has been recovering nicely. He will not need his social security. Need I remind you that Social Security is called Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. States make us buy car insurance. If we don't get in an accident we don't get to get that money back. Your mortgage company makes you buy insurance for your house. If it does not burn down you don't get the money back. MEANS TEST SS. Bill Gates doesn't need it and won't miss it. There are LOTS of people that will not need it and will not miss it.
 
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