That's what I always thought too. But the site seems to disagree? All of defense + social security is only 38%. Even if you also include all of medicare in that, you're only at 53%. Which is a majority, but not a vast one. And it probably isn't fair to really put social security in that category, because it is (sort of) self-funding (or at least, if you eliminated social security, that wouldn't just free up money to spend elsewhere).
thats their argument. if you take the ss tax away and privatize it then the wallstreet custodians get to play with it in market.. plus lower taxes and more fees for WS. one more thing , anytime you change the rules of the game you get to define the problems you are going to address and the problems you'll turn the blind eye to. so very high possibility of rigging the game. IMO even if you want to privatize SS current congress is the worst one to be allowed to.
More like they get to siphon off a percentage as rent seeking leaches.
"The projected actuarial deficit for the combined trust funds over the next 75 years is 2.66 percent of taxable payroll, which is slightly less than last year's projected deficit of 2.68 percent. As a share of the economy or gross domestic product (GDP), the actuarial deficit over the next 75 years is projected to be 1.0 percent."
Otherwise, as far as it looks right now, the system is going to crash under its own weight. Not today, not in 10 years, but perhaps in the 40 years between now and my supposed retirement.
Senior voters never seem to raise a stink about this. As long as politicians from both parties promise never to cut SS/Medicare, that seems to be enough to get their votes and send them home.
social security: 15.8% of tax spending education: 14.3$ national defense: 11.2% medicare: 9.5%
That's half of all Gov spending right there
The problems are simple yet nobody in the political spheres wants to acknowledge them: we spend way too much on SS/Medicare relative to taxation, and the more people off the payrolls and on the old dole, the worse off the country is, year by year.
Instead we get mislead about tax rates versus revenue, and are inundated with various "Welfare Queen"-type stories to keep us distracted from the most glaring budget problems we have.
The thing that pisses me off the most is that by the time the bill comes due and the younger generations have to pay off the debt incurred by their parents and grandparents, most of them will be too long dead to see how their collective greed bankrupted their own progeny.