Oddbean new post about login | logout The Social Security Administration expects their reserves to run out in 2035. That’s a different pile of money than most other government functions, and so without either tax increases or legislation that transfers other money to it, payments going out to retirees could actually be cut after that due to not enough income flowing in. I’m not sure what they’ll do at that point since we don’t even know what things will look like then, but basically 2035 is the next station to see if the train keeps going or not. This drawdown will represent “intergovernmental” public debt turning into public debt held by either the private sector, foreign sector, or central bank. https://m.primal.net/KmPL.jpg
It's important to point out that what "cutting benefits" means is that the government will only be able to pay out as much as they bring in. It's not going to be cut to zero, but it's going to be significant enough that those of us who are at a retirement age at that point in about 10 years will need to have capital in some other form to generate an income stream so that we can pay our expenses. The solution that I would prefer is to balance the books. We should have at least as much coming into SSI as we have coming out of SSI to beneficiaries. We could do that, easily. Remove the cap on FICA, and then we can adjust the % that we pay as employees and employers so that SSI can send out the checks and keep their promises. Oh, and SSI should be buying Bitcoin, not US Treasuries at an absurd low interest rate.
how about the government just stop stealing?
So, you would advocate for us to shut down the entire system, letting everyone who has been paying into the system figure it out? Or are you talking about something else?
print the money and stop deductions...but I wouldn't mind just not paying benefits
You're welcome to talk to your congresscritter and suggest that.
Haha, opting out is the only real solution.
And it's not a good one. We're trying to build a civilization, not a bunch of isolated houses with people blind to their community.
what percentage theft is necessary for civilization?
That really depends on what you want the civilization to look like. And what I want to see is not going to be what you want to see, so we have to find a way to come together and decide that number together. I think the biggest problem is the difference between governance and government. We need governance models that are built into the systems, and don't have to employ millions of people to push paper and run calculators. Right now the global government expenditure vs. GDP ratio is around 46.3%. That is INSANELY HIGH. But it's also built on a fiat monetary system where we can't trust any of the numbers because they are not real numbers. Our ability to trust each other across the world seems from the media noise like it's at an all time low. But unless all governments just switch over to Bitcoin on January 1st and we see what happens, nothing is really going to change.
I believe the technical term for this is the puking brachiosaurus. https://m.primal.net/KmPg.png
The reserves are already gone - Social Security lent the money to the rest of the Feds who spent it The Social Security "trust fund" is US Treasuries To raise money, SSA sells Treasuries If they didn't have those Treasuries and needed to raise money, the Treasury department would sell Treasuries It's just a paper game
So.... I should buy some Bitcoin?
That is not a USA only problem, it's a western world problem. Everyone and their mother is expecting to be able to retire. The good news is that they will be too old to fight, when they realize that there will be no retirement.
Coincidentally, 2035 is about the age for me to retire and collect. My undergrad econ prof told us in 1988 or so that there wouldn't be any Social Security to collect when my generation retired, and I've never seen anything to suggest that he was wrong. If the US is still around, there will still be something they call Social Security, but it's not gonna be what my generation was promised.
A lot of people don't really understand how social security works. If you're interested in learning more about it, there was a really good Cato Daily podcast about it: https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/social-security-still-poses-massive-fiscal-risks
Not good.
Ah...the social security ponzi scheme in all its glory. Most of my colleagues are obsessed with their pension contributions, even at a relatively young age. These people are making very real life sacrifices for a future moment in time when their government decides to fuck them with an inflation-shaped dildo.
Don’t you think they will just make up a name for some program that essentially creates more money to fund future Social Security and kick the can down the road some more
There is absolutely nothing to suggest that they won't just continue to borrow (i.e. print) more money even faster at the expense of dollar debasement and the future generations who don't have a vote, yet. Everything accelerates this train.
Probably wrong I thought SS was very well funded so much so that US Gov took out 3 billion from that trust with interest payments coming in monthly to cover the gap in the medicaid fund. Again I’m probably wrong
what SS benefits? lol. I’m not counting on it. I have plans and executing on it so I can live comfortably with or without SS.
