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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30095 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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Accordingly, your demand that you benefit

That is not actually my position. I demand that, after I have been forced to pay money in, that money isn't just ripped away to balance the budget. I accept that, if we stop trying to prop it up, social security is likely to run out of money long before I see a dime. I'm ok with that (relatively speaking). My demand is that we let the money run out first, not just pull the plug. The former is unfortunate but unavoidable, the latter is a vicious slap in the face to everyone who has been forced to pay into this bad program.

Fair enough—it's still a slap in the face to everyone who will have to pay in the meantime, though.

I'm fine with cutting off SS taxes immediately. Though from what @sarker said, that would mean that the money runs out immediately so I guess maybe it amounts to the same thing. I was under the impression that there was money left in the pot, but it sounds like I was mistaken.

I'm not sure, exactly. I'm pretty sure that other government programs took out loans from social security.

Social security is the single largest debt owner for the federal government, isn't it?

we let the money run out first,

There is no money. Money paid in today is paid out today.

https://www.npr.org/2005/04/06/4580019/shaking-faith-in-social-security

I thought the money technically did already run out. Didn’t the federal government borrow all of it decades ago?

The government maintains the fiction that there are two separate accounts.

  1. The general account which has a massive debt.

  2. The social security trust fund (funded by employment taxes) which has a positive balance

At some point this farce will no longer be maintained as the "trust fund" will be depleted. In theory, this would cause a reduction in benefits, but I doubt the gerontocracy would allow it. More likely, we will see massive tax increases on the remaining workers to subsidize the old.

The plan seems to be

  1. Borrow until enough Boomers die to transfer political control to the Millennials

  2. Cut off Generation X

  3. Profit.

That I don't know, unfortunately.

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