The frequent fliers who flew too much

Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by InclinedPlane on Monday May 07, 2012 @12:04PM (#3939549)

There is some truth to this, but not enough. Social Security provides a fixed rate of return, and provides benefits throughout old age, regardless of how long one lives. How? Not through investment, through fiat. And ultimately that's the core of the problem, because the only way to achieve that is to have more workers paying in to the system than there are retirees pulling from it. Whether it's dollars or government bonds sitting around in a vault somewhere the problem of making them multiply by fiat will always exist. And that's the problem that Social Security ultimately faces. Within the next decade we will face the "we've been stealing from Social Security" problem, but about 15 years after that we will face the absolute "Social Security can't pay for itself at all" problem.

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by sjwalter on Monday May 07, 2012 @01:14PM (#3939903)

This is taken directly from a Metafilter post[1]. In short, it seems the "social security is broke" trope isn't an accurate depiction of reality. The post is lengthier than this snippet, includes plenty of citations, and is worth reading in its entirety.

"Someone just told me that living outside the US for 5 years could disqualify me for Social Security benefits - I told them that I never expected to get them anyway.

It's been said upthread, but this pervasive attitude shows that the rich and their propagandamiesters are winning.

Straight talk on Social Security[2]:

'Here’s what Social Security is not:

- going broke;

- a Ponzi scheme;

- expected to stop paying out benefits in your lifetime;

- bankrupting our nation or future generations.'"

[1] http://www.metafilter.com/115423/My-FaithBased-Retirement#43...

[2] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/...

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Re:The frequent fliers who flew too much by InclinedPlane on Monday May 07, 2012 @02:10PM (#3940177)

That's nice, but it doesn't reflect reality. In reality it will require a great deal of budgetary pain just to get the government to pay out the social security trust fund. That represents a debt the US has made to itself but we haven't been very good at paying off even those loans. If we don't make any hard choices such as raising other taxes or cutting overall spending then we'll end up with an even greater increase in our national deficit and an accelerating buildup of our national debt. And that will cause the whole system (the economy, the government, everything) to come crashing down long before the so-called social security trust fund "runs out".

Right now a social security payments surplus is subsidizing many other government programs, when that subsidy ends within the next decade it will cause hardship.

More so, social security is on a glide slope to begin running an absolute deficit in about 25 years. At that point the trust fund will be emptied and there won't be as much money coming in as going out. That's a pretty serious problem.

Medicare is even worse off, by a huge margin.

Yes, we can change medicare and social security and perhaps fix these things, but right now the train is on a set of tracks which are aimed directly at the edge of a cliff. We can also potentially balance the whole budget and pay down our debt as well, but that isn't happening either. Look at the EU and their budgetary crises right now. The public doesn't want to pay down their debts, they don't want "austerity measures", they don't want to pay their bills, they want benefits to remain forever high regardless of whether that's financially feasible. And they are willing to vote and riot to have their way.

Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable in their current forms. Period. They need fixing. Period. Fixing them will be really motherfucking hard (politically and financially) for our country. Period.

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