You are an ignorant jackass who posts economics equations including I for investment with an understanding of Investment that proves such equations are meaningless to you. Economics and finance are topics where you are laughably unqualified. I’ll bet you took not a single quarter of Econ, or if you did, you got B- or worse.
Now we all aren’t what we seem. Bricker might be surprised to know I have 30-plus U.S. patents, published books, and scored in the 99.99 to 99.999 percentile rank in several IQ or educational achievement tests. Similarly, I’ll guess even your IQ might be measured with three digits.
But whereas Little Nemo is sincere enough that he will be able to form a correct view if he applies himself, I’m certain you will just double-down on your idiocy.
IIRC, in a previous thread on the topic you claimed that since the U.S. Government just spent the incoming SocSec money anyway, those taxes should never have been collected. Write a brief paragraph explaining what effect that would have had on U.S. finances.
Unable to come up with anything coherent? Just as I thought.
You’re absolutely correct. That was a foolish claim on my part. (Although in fairness, it certainly would not be sustainable). But it does indeed represent a strawman; I know that no one seriously claims EVERY person gains more than he put in.
So I’d like to withdraw that claim and admit error. That was a mistake.
In its stead, I’ll opine that the claim I’m arguing against is that Social Security returns more in payouts to an individual than that individual contributed, counting the future value of money, is true in MOST cases. In other words, in support of Social Security, Joe says, “For most individuals, Social Security returns more in payouts to an individual than that individual contributed,” and I reply, “That might be true, but is not indefinitely sustainable.”
I will buy all of that, but hasten to add that the sustainability could be ensured with some minor tweaks, such as eliminating the ceiling on payroll contributions but maintaining the ceiling on benefits.
OK, we’re making progress. See how your effective IQ increases when you get off the toilet and try to remember what words mean? Soon, you’ll be back to triple-digit IQ.
Next question:
(2) Are you talking about the real SocSec in the real U.S.? Or are you talking about some hypothetical SocSec that a (hypothetical?) “Joe” introduced, and just playing 4th-grade debate with Joe’s words?
In the latter case, just go away. In the former case,
(3) After losing this new debate are you going to fall back on the usual: “Well … of course when I said SocSec I meant SocSec+Medicare. It’s Medicare that has the problem, duuuuh.”?
No, it’s a transfer within the government. Or, if you want to be precise, it’s a transfer from the taxpayers paying regular income tax to the general fund to the SS trust fund to SS recipients. Still an intragovernmental transfer.
You forgot a few words
I have 30-plus worthless U.S. patents on useless items and methods, **self-**published books, and scored in the 99.99 to 99.999 percentile rank in several online IQ or educational achievement tests.
So, again, the government took money from the taxpayer and put it into one pocket. Then it took it out of that pocket and put it into another pocket. It replaced the money in the first pocket with a promise to take more money away from the taxpayer and replace it. Then it spent the money. Now they have to replace the money.
The government cannot replace the money with intra-government transfers of money, because the money has been spent. The money has to come from outside the government, i.e. the taxpayer.
The government used Treasury bills to pay for Congressionally approved spending instead of raising taxes. Some of those T-bills were purchased by Social Security. Now the government has to pay off the T-bills, and has the choice of convincing Congress to raise taxes for the purpose or selling more T-bills. Since the taxpayer didn’t pay for stuff originally, they have to pay now. The fact that some of the T-bill payments go to SS is irrelevant to the obligation to pay for ongoing government expenses somehow, whether by charging the taxpayer directly or kicking the can down the road and incurring more debt.
The real Social Security, standing alone. I’m not sure why you want to add Medicare; I agree that most people who get Medicare benefits receive more Medicare benefits than they paid in.
I didn’t want to add Medicare — I was trying to do you a favor. You’ve already revised your claim by removing the word “every.” When you discover that your new claim is also false, I don’t want the tedium of another substitution by you. Fine, your claim is about the real SocSec. Let’s now rewrite your claim — I hope for your sake that your phrasing isn’t an example of your prose in legal briefs :smack: — to make it clear.
Let me rephrase your claim this way: Either Social Security can return in no more than 50% of cases, more in payouts (discounted to reflect current value) to an individual (or his children, surviving spouse, etc.) than that individual contributed or is not indefinitely sustainable.
Do you agree that this is a fair statement of (though much clearer than) your current claim? Do you agree to the inclusion of “surviving spouse. etc.” or was that intended to be one of your “Natter natter natter … Gotcha!!”'s?
You’ll need to specify a discount rate for future value of money of course. But I think we can dispense with that by pointing out that your claim is just an insipidity of little interest.
Let’s start by working a simple example.
Suppose there are ten workers who each contribute $80, which will have a future value of $100. Five of them die early, two with widows; five living retirees and two widows receive $110 each in benefits. SocSec takes in $800 (10*$80), earns some interest — perhaps $200 using the same discount rate, but we’ll assume in this example it earns Zero interest — and pays out $770 (7*$110). 70% of participants receive more than they paid in; the system is sustainable even without Trust Fund interest earned.
Now, obviously, I’m not saying my figures are the correct figures. It’s just a trivial example to refute your conjecture about arithmetic.
If yours is, instead, a conjecture about the actual precise distribution of payments in and out, we’ll need you to locate and report relevant datasets.
The taxpayer did pay for the stuff. Or, to be precise, the taxpayer paid for SS, but it got spent on the other stuff. That’s why the SS trust fund is a debt and not an asset.
There is no reason it should not be indefinitely sustainable in a growing economy, as the overall pie from which payouts are made would be larger than the one into which payins were received.
In a stagnant or contracting economy, this becomes unsustainable, but in that case there are plenty of other problems to worry about.
I didn’t want to add Medicare — I was trying to do you a favor. You’ve already revised your claim by removing the word “every.” When you discover that your new claim is also false, I don’t want the tedium of another substitution by you. Fine, your claim is about the real SocSec. Let’s now rewrite your claim — I hope for your sake that your phrasing isn’t an example of your prose in legal briefs :smack: — to make it clear.