Boomer Blues: 'We don't learn from the past, and we don't plan for the future.'

Before you youngsters allow yourselves to be frightened by the well funded conservative campaign to loot the SS Trust Fund (see Looting Social Security - Part 2) and to be stampeded into cutting your own benefits, it's important to understand what the Trustees are actually saying about the long term health of the system.
And it's important to distinguish between the Old Age Survivors Insurance (OASI) fund and the Disability Insurance (DI) fund, which are often lumped together, since they are administrated by the same bureaucracy. As the report makes clear, the DI fund is not nearly as healthy as the OAS fund.

Under the long-range intermediate assumptions, annual cost will begin to exceed tax income in 2016 for the combined OASDI Trust Funds. The com­bined funds are then projected to become exhausted and thus unable to pay scheduled benefits in full on a timely basis in 2037. The separate DI Trust Fund, however, is projected to become exhausted in 2020.

As stated in the Trustees report, the projections are driven by the present economic crisis and by increases in longevity brought about by improvements in medical technology.

The balance point for the separate OAS fund (Social Security) has been estimated to be reached in 2046.
How long do you expect to live?

The overall health of the system has been seriously undermined by Congress' addiction to tapping into the fund to make their budget deficits looks a lot better than they actually are. If you are seriously interested in improving the health of the Social Security Trust Fund, I would focus on weaning Congress off stealing from the trust fund.
Do this first, then if necessary, consider raising rates on the wealthy, as is favored by the Obama administration.
If you think the solution is to cut benefits, then you must be a libertarian fool.

I totally agree we need to stop Congress from stealing from the fund to pay for its yearly bills. In order to do this though Congress will have to come up with this revenue from somewhere else: 1) borrow it, 2) increase taxes, or 3) decrease spending. And I also agree that this is a long term problem, and there are other short term problems that are more important.

I know the facts and as I've said, the solutions will either include raising taxes or cutting benefits or a combination of the two. I don't know what the proper mix is, but if you think it can all be solved by raising taxes on the wealthy you need to learn the facts about our budget deficits and long term problems. I'm not getting my ideas from some "well funded conservative campaign". Try giving people the benefit of the doubt before making false assumptions.

Either my post was removed or I didn't make one on this topic. But
chicken little has often been right.

I totally agree we need to stop Congress from stealing from the fund to pay for its yearly bills. In order to do this though Congress will have to come up with this revenue from somewhere else: 1) borrow it, 2) increase taxes, or 3) decrease spending. And I also agree that this is a long term problem, and there are other short term problems that are more important.

I know the facts and as I've said, the solutions will either include raising taxes or cutting benefits or a combination of the two. I don't know what the proper mix is, but if you think it can all be solved by raising taxes on the wealthy you need to learn the facts about our budget deficits and long term problems. I'm not getting my ideas from some "well funded conservative campaign". Try giving people the benefit of the doubt before making false assumptions.

A lot of people are worried about SS and Medicare. The solutions are simple: 1) increase taxes 2) reduce benefits 3) attract immigrants to help pay the taxes, or a combination of the three.

Dear fundamentalist,

It appears you have swallowed a pack of lies about the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. If you want to understand the facts I suggest you start with a careful reading of William Greider's excellent piece:

Looting Social Security</b

Excerpt: To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle, you have to roll back twenty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's great legislative victory in 1981--enacting massive tax cuts for corporations and upper-income ranks--launched the era of swollen federal budget deficits. But their economic impact was offset by the huge tax increase that Congress imposed on working people in 1983: the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age. A blue-ribbon commission chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both parties signed on. Since there was no partisan fight, the press portrayed the massive tax increase as a noncontroversial "good government" reform.

Ever since, working Americans have paid higher taxes on their labor wages--12.4 percent, split between employees and employers. As a result, the Social Security system has accumulated a vast surplus--now around $2.5 trillion and growing. This is the money pot the establishment wants to grab, claiming the government can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to workers twenty-five years ago.

Actually, the government has already spent their money. Every year the Treasury has borrowed the surplus revenue collected by Social Security and spent the money on other purposes--whatever presidents and Congress decide, including more tax cuts for monied interests. The Social Security surplus thus makes the federal deficits seem smaller than they are--around $200 billion a year smaller. Each time the government dipped into the Social Security trust fund this way, it issued a legal obligation to pay back the money with interest whenever Social Security needed it to pay benefits.

That moment of reckoning is approaching. Uncle Sam owes these trillions to Social Security retirees and has to pay it back or look like just another deadbeat. That risk is the only "crisis" facing Social Security. It is the real reason powerful interests are so anxious to cut benefits. Social Security is not broke--not even close. It can sustain its obligations for roughly forty years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, even if nothing is changed. Even reports by the system's conservative trustees say it has no problem until 2041 (that report is signed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the guy who bailed out the bankers). During the coming decade, however, the system will need to start drawing on its reserve surpluses to pay for benefits as boomers retire in greater numbers.

But if the government cuts the benefits first, it can push off repayment far into the future, and possibly forever. Otherwise, government has to borrow the money by selling government bonds or extend the Social Security tax to cover incomes above the current $107,000 ceiling. Obama endorses the latter option.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/greider

Looting Social Security, Part 2

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100111/greider

What we should be worried about is corruption within our government and the corporate elite.

Either my post was removed or I didn't make one on this topic. But
chicken little has often been right.

The symbiotic corruption between government and the corporate elite is jsut an extension of President Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex."

We are caught between the reality of vast separation of wealth in the nation, and a government which is responding to the economic shenanigans of corporate America by paying tier bills for them. Whi has seen most of the decline in wealth? Lower and middle class Americans. Who are paying the bills for all this? Lower and middle-class Americans. Who are fighting and dying in our immoral, corporatized wars? Lower and middle-class Americans.

The Obama Administration has fallen into the same trap which ensnared previous ones...and will reap0 the private benefits thereof.
Meanwhile, most of our nation is falling into poverty, our infrastructure is crumbling, and a significant portion of our electorate beat the drums of war and hatred.

We are a Christian nation in name only, and are paying the price for many years of Godless policies.

Pray for Peace and Dare to Act!

Dear fundamentalist,

It appears you have swallowed a pack of lies about the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. If you want to understand the facts I suggest you start with a careful reading of William Greider's excellent piece:

Looting Social Security</b

Excerpt: To understand the mechanics of this attempted swindle, you have to roll back twenty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Reagan. The Gipper's great legislative victory in 1981--enacting massive tax cuts for corporations and upper-income ranks--launched the era of swollen federal budget deficits. But their economic impact was offset by the huge tax increase that Congress imposed on working people in 1983: the payroll tax rate supporting Social Security--the weekly FICA deduction--was raised substantially, supposedly to create a nest egg for when the baby boom generation reached retirement age. A blue-ribbon commission chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both parties signed on. Since there was no partisan fight, the press portrayed the massive tax increase as a noncontroversial "good government" reform.

Ever since, working Americans have paid higher taxes on their labor wages--12.4 percent, split between employees and employers. As a result, the Social Security system has accumulated a vast surplus--now around $2.5 trillion and growing. This is the money pot the establishment wants to grab, claiming the government can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to workers twenty-five years ago.

Actually, the government has already spent their money. Every year the Treasury has borrowed the surplus revenue collected by Social Security and spent the money on other purposes--whatever presidents and Congress decide, including more tax cuts for monied interests. The Social Security surplus thus makes the federal deficits seem smaller than they are--around $200 billion a year smaller. Each time the government dipped into the Social Security trust fund this way, it issued a legal obligation to pay back the money with interest whenever Social Security needed it to pay benefits.

That moment of reckoning is approaching. Uncle Sam owes these trillions to Social Security retirees and has to pay it back or look like just another deadbeat. That risk is the only "crisis" facing Social Security. It is the real reason powerful interests are so anxious to cut benefits. Social Security is not broke--not even close. It can sustain its obligations for roughly forty years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, even if nothing is changed. Even reports by the system's conservative trustees say it has no problem until 2041 (that report is signed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the guy who bailed out the bankers). During the coming decade, however, the system will need to start drawing on its reserve surpluses to pay for benefits as boomers retire in greater numbers.

But if the government cuts the benefits first, it can push off repayment far into the future, and possibly forever. Otherwise, government has to borrow the money by selling government bonds or extend the Social Security tax to cover incomes above the current $107,000 ceiling. Obama endorses the latter option.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/greider

Looting Social Security, Part 2

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100111/greider

What we should be worried about is corruption within our government and the corporate elite.

The chickens are at the gate and they all have bills.

Before you youngsters allow yourselves to be frightened by the well funded conservative campaign to loot the SS Trust Fund (see Looting Social Security - Part 2) and to be stampeded into cutting your own benefits, it's important to understand what the Trustees are actually saying about the long term health of the system.
And it's important to distinguish between the Old Age Survivors Insurance (OASI) fund and the Disability Insurance (DI) fund, which are often lumped together, since they are administrated by the same bureaucracy. As the report makes clear, the DI fund is not nearly as healthy as the OAS fund.

Under the long-range intermediate assumptions, annual cost will begin to exceed tax income in 2016 for the combined OASDI Trust Funds. The com­bined funds are then projected to become exhausted and thus unable to pay scheduled benefits in full on a timely basis in 2037. The separate DI Trust Fund, however, is projected to become exhausted in 2020.

As stated in the Trustees report, the projections are driven by the present economic crisis and by increases in longevity brought about by improvements in medical technology.

The balance point for the separate OAS fund (Social Security) has been estimated to be reached in 2046.
How long do you expect to live?

The overall health of the system has been seriously undermined by Congress' addiction to tapping into the fund to make their budget deficits looks a lot better than they actually are. If you are seriously interested in improving the health of the Social Security Trust Fund, I would focus on weaning Congress off stealing from the trust fund.
Do this first, then if necessary, consider raising rates on the wealthy, as is favored by the Obama administration.
If you think the solution is to cut benefits, then you must be a libertarian fool.