The Social Security problem, what do you think? (1 Viewer)

bclemms

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This video is David Walker who is the US Comptroller General and head of the Government accountability office on Glenn Beck today. I posted this video in a couple other threads but probrably deserves a thread of its own.

Here is the wiki page of David Walker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
His government page:
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/dwbiog.html



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Why don't they just eliminate the S.S. tax cap? It should go a long way toward helping with the problem.
 
I think at least raising the SS tax cap, as well as raising the retirement age / age benefits can be withdrawn will be big helps. But we really need to stop spending so much money while at the same time cutting taxes.
 
The free market solution foundered in 2005, and that option has vanished forever. In absolute terms, Medicare is much bigger, and even the worst projections have Social Security cutting 30% of benefits if it is means-tested. Both parties can get around this proposal, and argue over raising or eliminating the income cap.

Social Security becomes a non-yielding welfare program if the latter occurs, so we can "safely" ignore Obama's marginal tax increase of 12%. As with other "crises", nothing will happen until the event actually materializes.

Glenn Beck's stock-in-trade is the chicken-little screed leavened with "bipartisan" populist criticism. His TV show lacks the warped humor of the radio program, which is unfortunate.

These debts are internal, and funded by overseas securities. that will continue apace. We had nice budget surpluses in the late 60s, and a large trade surplus in the Great Depression era. Good times!

I am more concerned with the populist Dobbsian creed gaining currency in so many quarters. The economic knowledge held by our ruling class and media sychophants is truly appalling.

Social Security owes its existance to Otto Bismarck, who devised the program to corral the senescent. Today, young people enthralled with the Moor Messiah throng to the polls to cast themselves into peonage to their elders. As Yakov Smirnov would say, "What a country!"
 
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/threadjack off
 
maybe we can raise the SS age to be death. i like how when you and your spouse die. you family cannot inherit the money. how can you work your whole life and then when you die they keep the money and they say its going bankrupt? how can a system that holds YOUR MONEY go bankrupt? they stole our money. Just give the money back to the people. lets raise taxes to pay for it and push back the age? i also want people who dont pay taxes to get money. how about all the illegals who work and get taxed who are never able to get SS and the system is still failing. lol i just dont get how people dont understand this system is being stolen.
 
The free market solution foundered in 2005, and that option has vanished forever. In absolute terms, Medicare is much bigger,

Predictions of SS defaulting date back to 1936. Dire predictions surface every election cycle--I find this year fewer than in previous elections. The real concern should be Medicare and it shouldn't be lumped in with SS.

THE TRUSTEES of the nation's Medicare trust funds have just released their 2007 annual report, and once again the news is grave. As the result of health care costs increasing at a much greater rate than wages, the hospital insurance trust fund is projected to be exhausted by 2019. Indeed, Medicare is in far worse shape than the Social Security trust funds, which are also ailing but are not projected to run dry until 2041.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...es/2007/06/09/the_coming_crisis_for_medicare/


In the spirit of being fair and balanced,....One of the few agenda items I give the Clintons a nod for is putting the fear of god into healthcare providers and big pharma to scrutinize their pricing policies. I am not confident any Rep will seriously attempt to address cost containment in healthcare.
 
maybe we can raise the SS age to be death. i like how when you and your spouse die. you family cannot inherit the money. how can you work your whole life and then when you die they keep the money and they say its going bankrupt? how can a system that holds YOUR MONEY go bankrupt? they stole our money. Just give the money back to the people. lets raise taxes to pay for it and push back the age? i also want people who dont pay taxes to get money. how about all the illegals who work and get taxed who are never able to get SS and the system is still failing. lol i just dont get how people dont understand this system is being stolen.

Yeah you right. I am gonna be 55 in March. I have been paying into the system since
I was 16. How much money would I have had if I could have invested the money for myself? I would be wealthy and retired, or at least have a lot more than I will ever get if I start collecting at 62 or 65.

To me it is just like another lousy tax.

Joe
 
Several solutions:

It should have been taken out of the general fund decades ago, but you can't leave a pile of money around politicans and not expect them to spend it, but what's done is done so let's go about fixing the problem.

1) establish a cut-off age for young workers to stop paying into social security as the program currently exists. I say 18 year olds, because that's when most will begin paying with a regular consistent paycheck of some sort (as opposed to a series of seasonal, odd jobs). Instead, take the FICA tax and roll it into a Roth IRA of the person's choosing not to be touched (i.e. drawn upon) until they reach 65. They never see it, so it isn't spent.

For the remaining baby boomers/Gen-Xers, divert tax revenues into keeping the existing program afloat until needed. Change the tax structure away from a deduction heavy/social engineering based income tax, into a true revenue generating one (either a flat tax or fair/consumption tax). More money would flow into the treasury (particularly with a consumption tax) because you would capture the cash economy.

Finally, siphon off all add-ons to the SS (i.e. SSI payments... the so-called "crazy checks") into separate items in the federal budget with reforms/changes to bleed away the federal government's responsibility for being the primary source of income.

The Federal government does not lose money due to tax cuts. Tax cuts generate more money to the treasury in the long run because there is more money in the market to be spent/invested.

If you want to control spending, hard caps coupled with an actual reduction in the size of the federal employee payroll would go a long ways to correcting that.
 
Yeah you right. I am gonna be 55 in March. I have been paying into the system since
I was 16. How much money would I have had if I could have invested the money for myself? I would be wealthy and retired, or at least have a lot more than I will ever get if I start collecting at 62 or 65.

To me it is just like another lousy tax.

Joe

Just curious: Would you be willing to give up your benefit in order to do away with the tax on future generations? Even if you say yes, I think most seniors would say no and that does make this issue a very sticky wicket (although not as urgent as Medicare).
 
Just curious: Would you be willing to give up your benefit in order to do away with the tax on future generations? Even if you say yes, I think most seniors would say no and that does make this issue a very sticky wicket (although not as urgent as Medicare).


Not No but HELL NO.

Joe
 
This video is David Walker who is the US Comptroller General and head of the Government accountability office on Glenn Beck today. I posted this video in a couple other threads but probrably deserves a thread of its own.

Here is the wiki page of David Walker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_M._Walker_(U.S._Comptroller_General)
His government page:
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/dwbiog.html




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I think given the status quo fiscal and foreign policies will precipitate the very crisis he describes in 10-15 years. I believe that because there is no political will to address the problem proactively. Quite the opposite, the reckless spending only seems to accelerate.

Addressing proactively means accepting limits on what is possible and that is an inadmissable thought in America. You can't have the Social Security, Medicare, pork and other entitlements and keep the military-industrial complex happy without significantly higher taxes. No politician will break that news, so instead of tax to pay for what we want we borrow $2 billion a day to make it possible.

It's difficult to predict how it could shake out by I don't find too many historical examples where a country or other political entity that got itself into this kind of trouble did not have major social and economic dislocations as a result.

At a minimum, I don't see how it can't get to the point where they means test the benefits and take them away from those who are deemed not in need (and continue to tax them). Seems like a logical first step to try to save the system in some form.
 
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