U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds

Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by lintiness on Friday August 19, 2016 @02:47PM (#12322459)

.39% of "assets" (debt issued by other parts of government). vanguard charges about a quarter this (with vehicles delivering substantially better risk adjusted returns). their "plan" is also slated to go bankrupt without adjustment.

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Re:U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, au... by galdosdi on Tuesday August 23, 2016 @04:52PM (#12347518)

It's true that their costs are greater than vanguard which is literally the cheapest private mutual fund company around. Try comparing it to an industry average; 0.39% is quite fair then.

The "plan going bankrupt" has nothing to do with the administration of benefits, however. It's not happening because the bureaucracy is screwing up and wasting too much money -- even if they worked for free, you'd only gain 0.39% more per year. It's congress that is underfunding (or overprovisioning, or some combination of the two) -- could be fixed in two seconds with a bill cutting benefits and/or increasing taxes without any real change for SSA. Also, when it "goes bankrupt" as people misleadingly call it, they'll still be able to pay about 4/5 of the benefits currently promised. In effect, congress by doing nothing has already implicitly reduced future benefits to 4/5 of the current statutory amounts. If you just assume you'll get 4/5 of what is being promised, then it's in no way bankrupt and is self sustaining forever. 4/5 is not chump change.

I've started to realize this whole "social security is a failure" talk may be FUD being spread to get people to accept further raiding of social security because "whatever, it's already broken"

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