stock market was up today...

#13,128
#13,128
Thunder Good-Oil said:
Did you stop reading after the part of the sentence that you’ve highlighted?
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What difference does that last portion make? The money is going to dry up if you have an increasing number of people receiving benefits vs those that are working and contributing. Add in the fact that life expectancy in 1940 was lower than it is now (people living longer) and the demographic cliff that occurred after the aby Boom generation... it simply isn't sustainable.
 
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#13,130
#13,130
Rasputin_Vol said:
Ponzi scheme...

Ratio of Social Security Covered Workers to Beneficiaries Calendar Years 1940-2013
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And there have been more births every year than 20 years earlier for a while now. The earliest third of surviving Boomers are older than their life expectancy at birth. There is a wave of them falling out of the program in the next decade. The administrators understand the variables and adjustments will be made as needed. It’s not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi’s don’t survive for almost a century.

Social Security is a regressive tax on workers. It isn’t a retirement plan. The tax code has been updated to be advantageous for savers to fund their retirements themselves instead of relying on a nanny state.
 
#13,131
#13,131
Rasputin_Vol said:
What is there to disagree with? Tell me how three years of contributing to SS results in 35 years of payments.
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Not disagreeing with that….it shouldn’t. I disagree that it will always be here as we know it. I think there will be vast changes and not everyone will get every penny owed them as a result of what will likely be a formula revision based on born on or after dates. That amounts to nothing more than kicking the can down the road. I also think the climbing debt will have a huge impact on the continued viability of the program. Personally, I think many programs will collapse under our extraordinary debt load.
 
#13,132
#13,132
Vol737 said:
Not disagreeing with that….it shouldn’t. I disagree that it will always be here as we know it. I think there will be vast changes and not everyone will get every penny owed them as a result of what will likely be a formula revision based on born on or after dates. That amounts to nothing more than kicking the can down the road. I also think the climbing debt will have a huge impact on the continued viability of the program. Personally, I think many programs will collapse under our extraordinary debt load.
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Let me be clear about what I'm saying. I think that the govt will print as much as it can to keep payments flowing. The question you need to ask is how much purchasing power will that really be by the time you receive benefits? I bet that in terms of nominal dollar amounts, they will pay you every penny they are supposed to pay you.
 
#13,133
#13,133
Thunder Good-Oil said:
And there have been more births every year than 20 years earlier for a while now. The earliest third of surviving Boomers are older than their life expectancy at birth. There is a wave of them falling out of the program in the next decade. The administrators understand the variables and adjustments will be made as needed. It’s not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi’s don’t survive for almost a century.
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The later generations/younger workers are not working the same jobs that their predecessors did and bringing in those same middle class wages because we have gutted our industrial base over the last 40 years.

Thunder Good-Oil said:
Social Security is a regressive tax on workers. It isn’t a retirement plan. The tax code has been updated to be advantageous for savers to fund their retirements themselves instead of relying on a nanny state.
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No one is arguing that it isn't a regressive tax. I'm just wondering why you can't admit that this it is a pyramid scheme? Only the base of the pyramid has been getting narrower since SS was created.
 
#13,134
#13,134
Rasputin_Vol said:
The later generations/younger workers are not working the same jobs that their predecessors did and bringing in those same middle class wages because we have gutted our industrial base over the last 40 years.


No one is arguing that it isn't a regressive tax. I'm just wondering why you can't admit that this it is a pyramid scheme? Only the base of the pyramid has been getting narrower since SS was created.
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Pyramid schemes collapse in a short time frame. OASDI will soon be a 90 year old program. The administrators know how to read actuarial tables. Politicians lose their seats by voting to adjust the variables so minor changes are deferred and become bigger issues.

Only slight decreases in benefit eligibility or increases in the tax rates or expanding the brackets are needed in order to keep the trust funds solvent for another generation or two. If it was simply a retirement plan then the welfare-type of benefits would be coming from the general fund.
 
#13,135
#13,135
Thunder Good-Oil said:
That’s still not a Ponzi scheme. When the program was enacted all of the data was factored in to determine how much the payroll taxes needed to be to cover EVERY beneficiary. Obviously there were going to be many in the initial groups of beneficiaries that were going to collect far more than they contributed. And there would be outliers in that group that would live for several decades.

The program will have had a positive fund balance for nearly a century. It’s a horrible take to compare that to a Ponzi scheme.

It has become a tax on workers and employers to provide welfare type benefits to many. It has been poorly managed. It isn’t a retirement savings plan. Everything that isn’t a defined benefits plan for workers should have been coming out of the general fund from the inception. I guess payrolls are the easiest place for Feds to find taxable wealth.

Also, it will only require a modest increase in the tax rate, modest decreases in the benefits, and/or additional increases to the initial age of eligibility to keep the fund balance out of the red.
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When they asked Madoff how he came up such an elaborate Ponzi scheme, his answer was simply "social security."
 
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#13,139
#13,139
Thunder Good-Oil said:
He literally was sent to prison for the rest of his life, but if you want to embrace his lies have at it.
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"embrace his lies?"

😂 Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm wrapping myself in his comment of "social security" like warm blanket.

Seriously, what incentive would Madoff have to lie about the origin and blueprints used for his scheme? One that seems so pluasable that it's hiding in plain sight.
 
#13,140
#13,140
Septic said:
"embrace his lies?"

😂 Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm wrapping myself in his comment of "social security" like warm blanket.

Seriously, what incentive would Madoff have to lie about the origin and blueprints used for his scheme? One that seems so pluasable that it's hiding in plain sight.
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Bernie probably thought a comparison of his lawlessness to the activities of the government that was taking away his freedom forever would leave a mark. Just another fail on his part. But if you want to believe Bernie Madoff go for it.
 
#13,141
#13,141
Rasputin_Vol said:
What difference does that last portion make? They money is going to dry up if you have an increasing number of people receiving benefits vs those that are working and contributing. Add in the fact that life expectancy in 1940 was lower than it is now (people living longer) and the demographic cliff that occurred after the aby Boom generation... it simply isn't sustainable.
Click to expand...
Don’t know if it’s accurate, but I recall reading when SS started the average number of years folks received benefits was 3. Maybe thats why the 3 year limit was originally set?
 
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#13,143
#13,143
definitely super spreaders. You're lucky, Orlando is one of the better ones because of Disney. I get to fly into seatac soon. That security is a nightmare.
 
#13,144
#13,144
IluvdoubleD's said:
definitely super spreaders. You're lucky, Orlando is one of the better ones because of Disney. I get to fly into seatac soon. That security is a nightmare.
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I brought Covid home from my vacay in Alaska last week.

Sorry to all the people in the PACKED Minneapolis Delta Sky Club last Sunday. My bad.
 
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#13,145
#13,145
Rasputin_Vol said:
Let me be clear about what I'm saying. I think that the govt will print as much as it can to keep payments flowing. The question you need to ask is how much purchasing power will that really be by the time you receive benefits? I bet that in terms of nominal dollar amounts, they will pay you every penny they are supposed to pay you.
Click to expand...

I see where you're coming from. The bold is precisely why I say the debt in and of itself will essentially collapse these programs. At some point, under our current debt trajectory, the purchasing power will be nil. The .gov may very well pay us every penny of what they are supposed to, but it matters not if it can purchase next to nothing. At that point, it's essentially a collapse by any other name. I believe that's the bigger issue the system is up against, not the number of people coming on and off the rolls. We are at 136% debt/gdp.
 
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