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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Problem is, we’re going broke.

Since 2010, the fund that SSA uses to pay benefits to retirees has been paying out more money than it has been receiving in taxes. At the current rate, the fund's trustees estimate that it will exhaust its reserves in 2033 and be unable to pay full scheduled benefits.

As the annual trustees' report shows every single year, of the 4 trust funds, HI/DI/OASI all have exhaustion dates projected in the near future, but SMI always passes with "adequately financed indefinitely" terminology. Which is merely because of how they were set up differently, with SMI being able to be part of the normal government deficit. There's no reason the other three can't be changed in a similar way, which would be a bit awkward for doomsayers if the trustees report every year said a brief 'all funds are adequately financed indefinitely'.

For who points this out, I've only seen MMTers who are trying to show there's no real fundamental economic viability problem here, rather than an accounting & legal issue with how the rules are currently written. And also Cato writers who aren't big fans of the trustees' flowery language and want it to be more explicit about SMI's potential governmental deficit spending.