We might have had one long ago, if Al Gore hadn’t been roundly derided for proposing a lockbox. Must have been a silly idea, huh, even if the deriders didn’t even know what it was.
Or raising the retirement age.
The point that needs to be reiterated is that SS is not going to suddenly collapse–the way all Ponzi schemes do–with those who started paying in late getting nothing.
People might start getting a worse deal than they otherwise would, but that’t the price we pay for not having death panels.
If you really want to be scared, look at medicare.
We can tweak social security by marginally icnreasing the tax rate or marginally reducing benefits or increasing the retirement age but incremental changes will not fix medicare, we need a single payer system for that and we’ve seen how baboons in teh room throw feces at the grownups that try to address this problem.
You really think the Democrts couldn’t have made political hay out of the fact that Reagan was proposing to reduce benefits and increase the retirement age if they decided to put their party’s political ambitions before the welfare of the country? Look at how the republicans are treating the cuts to medicare part C. Medicare is clearly the biggest fiscal problem that we face and the waste in medicare part C was clearly the lowest hanging fruit of any significance, and instead of being adults and trying to cut costs where they could be cut, they made it much more difficult for any future legislators to ever cut medicare in any significant way. We need more Republicans that are Americans first and Republicans second.
Wait until you are 70 and the number goes up by 25%
What if we raise the cap to a billion dolars? Would that make it more palatable? We can cap the payments without capping the income and still retain the illusion of insurance (the progressivity in teh system means that it was always at least part wealth transfer).
That didn’t used to be the case for social security. Social security used to run off of a separate budget and was not part of the general budget. I think there are agencies within the federal government that run off of separate budgets.
I said “to the extent that” and didn’t point out any specific examples.
You had a chance to bash your political enemies though…glad to help out.
I’m just trying to figure out if you have something to propose as an alternative to the current situation. You seem to object to the surplus “funding the deficit.” If you think the deficit would go down if SS stopped buying T-bills, you have a lot more faith in politicians than I do.
I’d say that T-bills were chosen as the safest investment on the planet, which protects against sudden downturns causing a deficit in the system. I’ve seen lots of reports about people putting off retirement because their 401Ks went into the dumper. Think how much worse things would be if Social Security went into the dumper also.
Would you rather the government buy up big chunks of companies with the money? Buy corporate bonds? Buy the bonds of foreign governments? Buy Greece? You don’t like the current system, so it is up to you to suggest an alternative.
I’m going to be getting a worse deal than was the case when I started paying into the system, since if I retire at the age I used to be able to retire I give up a lot of benefits. I’m not objecting because it is necessary to keep the system afloat, but it is not like Social Security has been static since inception.
I object from a mental accounting perspective. As I’ve stated a small surplus here with a large deficit there is the same as just having a deficit. If the money is not partitioned then, in fact, the taxes taken from us for OASDI are really being used to fund the war or clean up the oil spill. We all assume that the money that is taken from us for SS will be used to pay the current SS benefits or, in theory, be set aside for us when we retire.
Selling the T-bills to yourself and spending the money doesn’t seem like the safest bet to me. And, if we keep spending at the current rate, those T-bills may just end up being worthless. I don’t have an alternative other than partitioning the funds…maybe pull Gore off the climate circuit and get him working on that lockbox idea. Buy gold with the funds and stuff it in a lockbox.
That would be a shock to the folks who hold over 10 trillion dollars worth of treasuries around the world. Arguing that the trust fund might be fraudulent by attacking the investment grade of treasuries is pretty weak.
There will always be some level of contributions (OK, taxes) that can be made in order to provide a certain level of payouts. No matter what the ratio of workers to retirees is, the formula can be adjusted to perpetuate the scheme.
No one who begins paying into the system is promised a specific return in present or future dollars, and even if they were, congress can override all promises many years later in order for the scheme to remain solvent.
This is not to say that the amount contributed will be acceptable, nor the amount of payout practical, but with constant adjusting, it can continue indefinitely, unlike a true Ponzi scheme, which will always fail eventually.
‘True ponzi scheme’(s) fail because they don’t have the same scope or power to force people to pay into them. They are purely voluntary…no one is holding a figurative or literal gun to your head, making you join. Unlike Social Security or Medicare, where the government can and does force compliance.
And it’s debatable whether or not it will be perpetual at this point. Both systems could fail completely or partially, which merely means that the ‘ponzi scheme’ simply took longer to fail than most…but then, it also had that larger scope and the governments gun behind it, which sort of explains why it took so long…
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Well, people who disagree with me are sometimes Nazis who want to hasten the death of the weak and a drag on society. Which is how I see both Nazis and people who want to pull the social security benefits out from under the disabled and elderly. Now, I in no way want to imply that posters on this board are doing anything but arguing in good faith: they are not Nazis unless they are Nazis. I’m drawing an analogy here. Fear mongering is an argumentative fallacy, an appeal to the emotion of fear. The man who urged us to pass social security rightly stated that as a nation the United States of America has to fear only fear itself.
Frightening people in an argument is disappointing. It seems to me to be designed to divide people.
As I mentioned earlier, the thread (not the Posters, heaven forbid!) becomes silly.
The Soc Sec Fund buys T-bills; I buy T-bills. The Soc Sec Fund is therefore maliciously financing meat inspection (or whatever “government waste” we’re objecting to today). Does that mean I also am maliciously financing meat inspection?
Suppose that instead of investing in T-bills, the Soc Sec fund bought Algerian bonds, or Indonesian real estate. Would your objection go away?
Moldy banknotes under that mattress? No interest yielded, but at least we’re not financing malicious meat inspection! Am I getting the idea?
This is called the Buy High, Sell Low investment philosophy. True, it might work out better than buying T-bills! I hope not though. How about you?
If you buy T-Bills. then you are making a conscious decision to invest your own money and weigh the risks vs promised returns accordingly: risk of default by the US gubmint, and (perhaps more importantly) risk to your purchasing power via the governments ability to devalue the currency in the future via inflation.
So it’s your money to invest. It’s up to you. You are accountable for the decision. You could also buy Algerian bonds if you wanted, or Indonesian real estate, after weighing those risks and potential returns accordingly.
With SS, you have no choice. That decision is being made for you.
What’s worse:
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You don’t even own the T-Bills. They aren’t even held in your name. So you can’t sell them on the secondary market, for example, and switch into another asset if you wanted to do so.
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The government isn’t even promising you a return based on a definable asset, with a coupon or expected increase in value. It is simply promising you a nominal stream of US dollars to be paid at some point in the future. It also has the ability to dial that stream up or down at will depending on whatever political decisions it makes between now and then. So that’s another part that is out of your control.
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And, as stated above, the government always has an additional safety valve at its disposal (if things get too tight) by simply inflating its way out of any obligation. It can promise you $30,000/yr in nominal terms 20 years from now, but the actual purchasing power of that annuity can be decreased dramatically if the government chooses to devalue the currency.
In a private scheme, with your own money controlled by you, there are ways to hedge and/or mitigate against all of the risks described above - risk of default, risk of inflation, risk against the principal value of the asset. Private investors make these decisions all of the time.
Not so with SS. You are not allowed to make any such choices with the money that has been deducted from your paycheck. You can’t even do the most simple, basic thing and hold a T-Bill in your own name, which you then might choose to sell/switch/trade for another asset, if the mood strikes you.
That’s because it’s mathematically impossible to do so. The money that could be used to do buy that asset in your name is already occupied, paying off someone else.
That’s why it’s a Ponzi scheme.
So many misconceptions. So little time. 
First: Social Security is an income transfer system. It transfers money, to some extent, from the rich to the poor. It transfers money from the short-lived to the long-lived. It transfers from those without dependents to those with dependents.
Now we can agree to disagree on whether a government-operated pension system should have those income-transfer characteristics. But do let’s not pretend the Social Security system is something other than what it is.
Second: The idea that the government should speculate with its S.S. funds was one of many bad GWB ideas that, fortunately, was rejected. Open a new thread if you don’t understand why it was a bad idea. I will say here that GWB’s idea, while seeming to appeal to ordinary middle-class, was actually designed for the finance sector and for the wealthy: it would have led to a quick inflation of equity values, though perhaps with a corresponding decline as the Baby Boom busted.
Finally: What does S.S. Fund investing in T-bills, rather than Algerian bonds, banknotes under the mattress, or whatever, have to do with whether the nonsensical equation with “Ponzi scheme” makes no sense or makes little sense? Are you suggesting that the Algerian bonds or whatever would have outperformed T-bills? Are people still preaching the simple-minded mantra that U.S. government obligations are a poor investment? I’m not sure that has held up so far in the 21st century.
I’m sorry I’m so stupid. I’m thankful that people like you and Elvis1Lives and Dick Dastardly are so patient with me, helping me to fight my ignorance and clear up the misconceptions that are in my head.
P1. Nearly all of SS benefits are not means-tested. So while it is certainly an income transfer system, it is only very rudimentarily a rich-to-poor transfer. FDR knew it would never fly if he sold it that way, and it’s design has been to (at least try to) mimic a standard retirement scheme.
P2. I was laboring under the poor misconception that it was actually MY money…you know, since it was deducted from my paycheck and all. I don’t want the government speculating with anything. Especially since it’s not the government’s money. It’s mine.
I am certainly willing to take ownership of my contribution and invest it according to my own risk/reward profile, and live with the results.
Are you?
You really should have read all the posts since my original post and saved yourself the effort.