Source: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4a3.html

Tool: Excel

This is rather interesting. It makes all the talk about it failing seem a bit trivial.

That cost curve looks exponential.

Sure. But the income is generally keeping pace.

The boomers have timed it perfectly to coincide with their exit.

Nice. Next steps might be to try and account for inflation by converting to 2020 dollars. 70 years of inflation can make a difference in perception.

Problem is population. When population growth goes flat or negative the truth of this program becomes evident. It’s like multilevel marketing.

All we need to do is raise the retirement age form 67 to 70 to adjust for increases in life expectancy and lower birth rates.

you make it sound like there arent ways to account/fix for that. you can increase revenue/taxes, reduce payouts a certain %, increase retirement age, etc. Of course none of those things are politically popular, but its fear mongering to suggest that SS is at risk of going insolvent. On the current trajectory without any changes the program can continue to pay out to retirees, just at reduced rates.

Well, considering those "assets" are really just IOUs from the taxpayer, who is already on the hook if SS goes belly up, I am not sure this graph is really a good interpretation of reality.

It isn't like they have a stock portfolio for this-- it is treasuries. The money has been spent already.

And look at when those assets were acquired. We just saw a huge bank fail because they were holding treasuries with low interest rates. With treasury rates around 4% or higher, we should probably discount some of that asset line.

If anyone's talking about Social Security failing, it's because they want to shake confidence in the system so they can carve it up somehow. The Social Security trust fund is one of the biggest piles of money on Earth, so a lot of Republicans look at it the way Wile E. Coyote looks at the Road Runner.

Or get rid of the cap where you stop paying social security taxes on income over $160k. Seems preferable to making people work even longer in their later years

The US life expectancy has dropped back to what it was in 1996. Drug overdoses, COVID, suicide and the obesity epidemic have all wrecked havoc on our population.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-just-lost-26-years-worth-of-progress-on-life-expectancy

It is because the Boomers are exiting the workforce that SS revenue falls relative to expenses, causing that peak in assets.

Almost anything reported in dollars is going to lookbe exponential because of inflation and population growth.

That would just make the problem worse because it would increase liabilities. The wealthy don't need social security.

The top marginal tax rate is already nearly 60% between federal and state. Higher taxes are not the answer.

I've had teachers in grade school talkin' about this since like 2002: there's going to a be a lot of retirees collecting and a lot less kids paying in than ever. Boomers that paid ss their whole life don't feel like their payments should be reduced. Their kids don't feel like they should pay disproportionately more. It's going to be a massive conflict.

Had the fed not used up s.s. as if it were just another federal tax, it would've been fine, i guess

IIRC the plurality of US debt is held be social security, so the people whining about the debt are creating 2 problems out of nothing.

sure, as it is a population model. The boomer bulge is entering its dearth slope not coincidentally at the same time it is peaking at retirement. The point is that it corrects. All on its own, But we should abolish the cap on FICA taxes, put the full retirement age back to 65, use a better CPI index, COLA the earnings threshold for taxation that was set back in 1984, and increase the minimum benefits. And medicare needs to be rolled into a comprehensive universal health insurance system.

They are 'IOUs' they same way a t-bill is an IOU.

Why not 90?

I would like to see this modeled out for the next 50 years given current workforce trends

Why don't we make the last day of work the day you die? That way we wouldn't even need SS. Why do the plebs even need rest and retirement? s/

Maybe if billionaires paid their fair share of 25%( or much much more )and not 0% to 3%, when we grow old we could buy our grandchildren useless junk they don't want. I thought old people would be pro old people expenditures.

Agreed. My point is anything tied to an exponential factor will eat anything not defined against the same. I am no expert here but I'd think legislation which sets non population based caps or doesn't compensate for inflation will be a problem.

Higher average income earners get relatively less back (double your salary and taxes paid doesn't double your benefits) so it shouldn't make the problem worse. Optionally, the cap could be removed to extend solvency while changing benefits to not increase for those earning over the current cap.

If none of this is to your satisfaction, an alternative of increasing social security taxes by ~3.4% would extend full solvency of the program to around the year 2100.

Also, who pays 60% taxes in the US? IIRC, the highest income percentiles tend to pay around 20-25% in effective federal income tax rate after accounting for deductions and other creative accounting. I doubt between social security taxes (capped to no longer have income taxes after $160k), state taxes etc, almost anybody pays nearly 60%. Removing the cap would make it so social security is no longer a regressive tax where higher earners pay a lower percentage of their income.

When social security was first created, the retirement age was later than the life expectancy. It was insurance against outliving your retirement savings, not intended as a primary retirement plan

they raised the age and the tax for boomers back in 1980. Since then, more income has gone to wealthy people over the payroll tax cap which has decreased the trust fund balance.

>Well, considering those "assets" are really just IOUs from the taxpayer, who is already on the hook if SS goes belly up, I am not sure this graph is really a good interpretation of reality. It isn't like they have a stock portfolio for this-- it is treasuries. The money has been spent already.

The trust fund will sell the bonds and someone else will buy them. Demand for us bonds is immense bc it is the exchange currency of the world.

> And look at when those assets were acquired. We just saw a huge bank fail because they were holding treasuries with low interest rates. With treasury rates around 4% or higher, we should probably discount some of that asset line.

The bank failed due to a run on deposits triggered by a concentrated customer base in ventures capital startups. Bonds only decrease in value if they are sold before maturity so the slow and predictable draw down of the trust fund is a non issue with regards to interest rate fluctuations

The US isn't expected to grow any further in population so SS and similar funds have to deal with the disproportionate size of boomers and generations after them, but after that it won't be an issue without a significant demographic change

Lots of issue at play but there aren’t a lot more boomers than younger generations. Their were more boomers than previous generations which allowed boomers parents to get a gift. Add immigration and population affects are a wash. One issue is wealthy hoarding money above the payroll income tax cap more so than in the past

> Had the fed not used up s.s. as if it were just another federal tax, it would've been fine, i guess

That has zero affect in solvency. The IOUs are legally obligated to be paid back. This is a fake issue pushed by republicans. The government will find a new buyer of the debt when it comes time for ss trust fund to sell it

But the tax rate used to be a lot lower due to that. We raised the tax rate form 3% to 12% bc people wanted longer retirements. Also, infant mortality plays a big role in increased life expectancy but doesn’t effect retirement

Probably a dumb question here, but what's the source of the increased asset reserves since the late 80's? The gap in income vs. cost seems too low.

And not raising the debt limit means not paying the interest to social security funds and thus destroying it. I think some republicans see it getting two birds with one strike. Destroying the social security funds and wrecking up u.s. economy while democrats hold the white house. Perhaps getting some nice golden parachute from russian or chinese oligarchs.

Warren gets it

I'm actually excited to break the payroll tax cap by a few k this year!

On that note, the point of the cap is to say "hey you've put enough into ss to save for retirement, keep the rest." Imo I'd rather they means tested the benefits than increase the cap.

Wealthier people live longer and draw social security longer. The percent of gdp over the cap has increased since the 1980s even with the yearly increase in the cap. It’s also why there is a big jump from 24% to 32% in income taxes at $183,000 but that could be up to $200,000 using 401k deduction. The way I look at it is once you make that much money, you are probably lucky that whatever career path you picked is in demand. Democrats generally say they would create a donut hole by applying the tax on income over $250,000

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Right now the cap on the payroll tax is at around 150, very much to the point if wealthy people are living longer than means testing the benefits would reduce payments to them more. Of course the problem with that is that there's a lot less rich people than poor ones.

Also almost all of these ideas go against the principle of ss, which was to be a government sponsored retirement program you paid into and got out once you retired. Basically all of the ideas to fix it completely neglect that (out of necessity.)

Means testing is tricky because people will spend down savings faster to avoid it. The scary thing about means testing is it’s a slippery slope. We already have means testing sort of. When they added taxes on ss benefits in the 80s it was never inflation indexed. so now most people have to pay income tax on their benefits. Raising the cap brings in a lot more money than means testing according to the ssa analysis. Another possibility is to fix ss by shifting the medicare payroll tax to the ss trust fund so that ss is still a pay in to get benefits design. Medicare is only half funded by payroll taxes anyway and is mostly paid for by the general fund.

So back in the late 80s was Social Security just adding to the National Debt?

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One small detail that gets overlooked is that the fund is empty. All of the money put into it was exchanged for IOUs from Congress and then spent. It wasn't invested. It was spent.

The only way turn those IOUs back into cash are to tax current and future taxpayers to raise the money.

Pushing total tax rates to over 50% might not be a great plan if we want to have a growing economy.

You said it yourself though: fixing SS is extremely political unpopular.

You need to either reduce benefits or increase taxes. Neither are good options.

If you remove the cap and remove the max payment, then that principle is retained, though, isn’t it?

That’s part of the messaging meant to shake confidence. That messaging had its peak when GWB was trying to introduce private accounts, back when SS was about to dip into those reserves. Lots of rhetoric about how those reserves didn’t exist, and why we therefore urgently needed those private accounts now.

The fund is very much real; its value is backed by the most stable investment that exists. It’s empty only in the same way that your “mortgage” or “rent” account is empty, if it is paid out of an account that other expenses come out of too.

sure, but my bigger point is its not an "like an MLM marketing" scam, as the prior poster was suggesting

So enough to last til my death. Well, that’s…good?

“Here’s a gold watch and now, turn around”

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I'm confused. Is social security going broke or not?

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We know that by 2035 something will have to give. Everyone who is going to pay into it is born already, and we know who will be retiring and how long they will live on average between now and then.

Unless we drastically increase our young legal immigrant labor force, increase retirement age, reduce benefits, or add funds another way, that Asset Reserves line will start and exponential decline.

It isnt a trivial matter, but if we do something now, it may never be an issue. But it is a real and valid problem that is getting worse everyday.

What everyone fails to realize as they are arguing is that - multiple Presidents have used the SS Fund as their own personal piggy bank for projects. I believe it was Nixon that first took the lid off this (don't quote me) and made it so the government could take from this for other projects. If we put the lid back on, problem solved.

Exactly that cost curve is going to continue going up and the income isn’t going to trend the same way. Currently the fund is collecting 95% of what it needs to pay annually. If we run a 5% deficit against the trust, the trust will be emptied in 20 years. Because the of the difference between incoming money and outgoing benefits the trust is expected to be exhausted by 2033-2035.

It can be solved at anytime, but solutions today will be far less painful than solutions in 2032

I’m so glad we improved the program back when we thought government ought to serve the people.

The bonds that the trust fund holds are a unique series issued to the trust fund. You cannot buy them anywhere else. Makes it easy to default on them without harming the value/credit associated with other US bond series.

"The full faith and credit of the United States" is valuable only for as long as we can levy sufficient taxes to cover our bills. After that point, very bad things start happening very quickly.

I've been advocating for privatization since the Reagan administration. As things stand right now, I and my cohort are about to take it in the shorts because propaganda beats facts.

Being robbed of 12.4% of my income for a ponzi scheme that will be insolvent in 10 years seems like it's really serving me /s

Yes it has a depletion date in 2034.

Anyone here claiming social security is fine have truely zero idea what they are talking about. The numbers of today are very much not the numbers of 2035. It's one of those things where the graph doesn't look so bad until you forecast 10 years out.

It would take HUGE large changes today to add a few years to the depletion date.

ssa.gov

Yes. A T-Bill is an IOU. When it is the government that holds them, it is an "I Owe Myself".

If a company claimed their internals accounting were assets, they would be prosecuted for fraud.

SVB has entered the chat.

Unless you're like 70 years old on reddit, you'll likely live past the depletion date.

We Logan's Run society now. Only instead of un-aliving you when you turn like, what it is? 28 or 30? They force you to stay alive x amount of years minimum.

You’re assuming I’m not in control of my expiration date

Can’t imagine the “means testing” will be low enough to off set the increase they’d get from lifting the cap, since no one feels like “oh, hey, that benefit I’ve paid into for years? Yeah, don’t care, I’ve got enough” unless they’re really rich.

I know plenty of people who could live without the benefit, but they’re going to be enraged if their benefits get cut.

My social security plans ... in 20 years, my Bitcoin will fund my retirement.

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It has not for years, look closer at that chart.. the income has been steadily slower pace than cost since 2009.

>legal

Correct, we need that tax revenue desperately. Demographics are destiny.

OK so just eliminate the income cap that the SS tax is applicable to. Or collect more from 401ks and IRAs.

Privatization of Social Security is non-sense. It would cease to be Social Security, as it would no longer provide a guaranteed income to all Americans.

The devil.is in the details. Research 'assets' these are basically non interest bearing notes to the US government with no guarantees. This is part of what funds deficit government spending each year

The cap has been increased several times.

They do means test it. The rate of "return" is higher the lower your AIME.

How convenient that Congress makes 170 to 230K a year.

And yet there are hundreds of trillions of unfunded liabilities, and not just for SS.

The system needs reform, not kicking the can 2 generations down the road.

I mean Sweden privatized its SS back in the 90s too.

Sweden privatized its social security decades ago.

I think you're confusing unfunded liabilities with current debt.

Solvency dwindles if you're going to expand benefits and lower the retirement age.

>use a better CPI index.

Redundancy aside, I don't know what that means.

Flat population growth is fine. Negative is a problem

They are a small part of the overall national debt . Not sure what you mean by not guaranteed but as the law stands they are.

Depends on how you interpret the facts. If nothing changes, all SS beneficiaries receive a 20-30% reduction in benefits when the funds are depleted. What republicans say is that the cuts are coming. We can either plan for them or it’s an across the board cut.

Obviously for political reasons, that turns into pushing granny off a cliff

That’s a façade, congress makes MOST of their income via bribes.

You seem to be confusing campaign funding with income.

If the campaign funds improve their chances of winning election,they personally benefit

It’s increased every year

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/02/should-we-eliminate-the-social-security-tax-cap-here-are-the-pros-and-cons

The fact you don't pay payroll taxes on something that isn't payroll is the point.

Depends on life expectancy gender and spousal benefit

>The result in this study implies that the differential mortality between low earners and high earners reduce the progressivity of Social Security. Estimates show that, under current Social Security, the IRR (i.e., the rate of return of lifetime payroll taxes) for the 1930 cohort in the bottom income quintile is 1.67% compared with 2.28% for those in the top income quintile. This difference in IRR is widened for the 1960 cohort due to larger mortality differences—0.6% for the bottom income quintile compared with 2.46% for the top income quintile.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44846

Hmm, maybe forcing people to pay into a system they might not survive to benefit from was a bad idea.

Obviously it was a joke. But not all bribes are in the form of campaign funds. Other bribes are the paid speeches and future employment offers

Earned income tax credit offsets that issue. Or are you making an argument to replace the flat payroll tax with a progressive tax ?

Which you till pay taxes on.

This, combined with the numerous bureaucrats and tech professionals who are their donors is why that donut hole was selected.

Ultimately it's telling they don't just try to lift the cap entirely.

tech professionals that make more than $160,000 or less than $250,000 are big campaign donors?

I'm suggesting a system that is effectively a ponzi scheme probably isn't the most sustainable.

Then again other countries have higher retirement ages and much hire contribution rates for pensions(as in the 20+%, with Italy being at 33%), so maybe the problem is the US trying to get something from far less than other more sustainable systems.

Ponzi scheme implies hidden accounting. It’s transparent from the start that the first generation received a gift

Ten years ago the depletion date was 2025. I’ve tried to find the ever changing insolvency date. It moves back by a few years every few years. Nobody explains why or how.

Changes would have to be made to maintain benefits as they are currently described. But if no change to the law is made, benefits would decrease by ~20-25% compared to what was promised.

They loaned the money to the federal govt, which means SSA is collecting interest on cash just sitting there.

The funny thing is there was a book (probably not the only one, but the one I remember) written in ~1994 talking about how SS would be gone just in time for my generation to collect it. (Born in 1976) And every time a Democrat has been elected since 1994, suddenly the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are pushed right to the top of every newspaper and news website. In 2009, they were saying Medicare will go bust in 2017 and SS in 2024. From 2016 to 2020, nobody talked about the solvency of these two programs. Now magically, Medicare and SS are on the brink of disaster again, but…not for another 12 years.

Folks, there is no disaster. The money is available. Do you want to know how I know that? It’s because old people vote. The money will always be found for old people because if it isn’t, the politicians get removed.

They move back the depletion date every five years or so.

Or get more workers to pay in. Turns out, there are literally millions of people all over the world dying to get to the US and work.

No it doesn't. It implies that no real investment is made, and the returns to old investors are just the injection from new "investors"

Ponzi scheme is intentionally deceptive and illegal fraud. Social security is intentionally transparent about earlier generations getting a gift. Your making a false analogy.

No need to be deceptive when you're forcing people to contribute, and the degree of contribution can be manipulated well after "investors" have committed to a particular contribution.

All you have to do is say it's for their own good.

The analogy is the way it's structured. Along that dimension of comparison it's perfectly apt.

Economic bubbles are a form of ponzi schemes too in the way they are structured.

Social security is a ponzi scheme in all the important ways that it make it so. They are unsustainable because they don't actually produce anything.

Forced participation or variations in benefits due to life expectancy isn’t deceptive. It’s a trade off made by society to give a gift to earlier generations. Calling it a Ponzi scheme is a rhetorical ploy to disparage something you don’t like for other reasons because you think people will believe your false analogy more than they will your real issue which is forced participation

Millennials are not reproducing. So there will be too few people to pay for their retirement in 2050s. Boomers did reproduce.

Nope, insider trading.

No, it's a ponzi scheme. Calling it a tradeoff by society doesn't preclude it from being a ponzi scheme.

If it took your money and actually invested it in something, then I wouldn't call it a ponzi scheme.

I take issue with forced participation, but that doesn't mean all forced participations are ponzi schemes.

Think of it this way: if it's not a ponzi scheme, then you wouldn't need to increase the rate or the cap to keep it solvent.

> No, it's a ponzi scheme. Calling it a tradeoff by society doesn't preclude it from being a ponzi scheme.

But everybody knows why it made the trade off and it wasn’t intentionally deceptive

> If it took your money and actually invested it in something, then I wouldn't call it a ponzi scheme.

Is the intention of social security to invest money? Is it being intentionally deceptive paying out benefits from tax revenue?

> I take issue with forced participation, but that doesn't mean all forced participations are ponzi schemes.

Obviously. Ponzi schemes are fraudulent. Social security isn’t fraudulent

> Think of it this way: if it's not a ponzi scheme, then you wouldn't need to increase the rate or the cap to keep it solvent.

That’s not fraudulent.

>But everybody knows why it made the trade off and it wasn’t intentionally deceptive

No, it was sold as individual workers contributing to their retirement later on, which isn't how it works.

>Is the intention of social security to invest money? Is it being intentionally deceptive paying out benefits from tax revenue?

It's *not a progressive redistribution program either*.

>Obviously. Ponzi schemes are fraudulent. Social security isn’t fraudulent

That's a legal distinction, not a structural one.

>That’s not fraudulent.

Yeah it's just a ponzi scheme in all but name.

Do you not see how you are fixated on the part that isn't required of a ponzi scheme, and ignoring the very argument being made that it is structured by one? You are wishing to maintain a rhetorical air about it, and avoid the actual argument.

Economic bubbles aren't fraudulent either, but they're *also ponzi schemes*

No, if we did nothing the payout would be 85 percent of expected in about 12 years then sit there as the demographics normalize, boomers temporarily drawing it down for next few decades, then levels out

Those who say ss is going broke r scam artists trying to privatize SS and lower taxes for the rich, and those who listen to them in the right wing world who parrot it

> No, it was sold as individual workers contributing to their retirement later on, which isn't how it works.

I think it was obvious from the start the first generation of beneficiaries were gifted into the program

> It's not a progressive redistribution program either.

Not sure what you are getting at

>That's a legal distinction, not a structural one.

True but still a significant distinction rooted in transparency versus deception

> Yeah it's just a ponzi scheme in all but name.

That’s just lazy or dishonest

> Do you not see how you are fixated on the part that isn't required of a ponzi scheme, and ignoring the very argument being made that it is structured by one? You are wishing to maintain a rhetorical air about it, and avoid the actual argument.

You are wishing to portray a negative connotation with an unlawful deception to a transparent program with structural debt due to life expectancy and birth rates and immigration rates

> Economic bubbles aren't fraudulent either, but they're also ponzi schemes

They have similarities but that’s also a false analogy.

Analogies allow for differences.

Ponzi schemes are just as unsustainable even when transparent. It's just harder to get people to buy in.

Unless you force them to.

Eliminating the income cap will not generate enough revenue to cover the shortage. It isn't even close.

A privatized plan could still provide a minimum guaranteed income to all workers. (the "workers" part there is important, IMO).

If you take the FICA taxes that I generated (taken directly from my paycheck and my employer's "share"), and pretend that it was invested in a variety of index funds with a long-term growth of 5% (actual long-term growth is closer to 7%), I should have a bit over a million dollars at retirement age (+/-65). That includes the various "crashes" that have happened over the years.

If my retirement income is kept to less than long-term growth, I would have roughly $50k per year. Right now I'm projected to get $20-$25k depending on when the "haircut" hits and I have to work until almost 68.

Make it so half of any unused funds go back to the feds to cover those with lower lifetime earnings.

Even a person that works for nearly the minimum wage can generate $500-700k of retirement. But we can sweeten that a little from the government.

In the case of people with significant old-age issues (i.e. dementia) there is a pile of money that can be used for their care. That reduces the amount of money that the government must pay.

Social security as currently established is a Ponzi scheme. Sweden has privatized successfully as has Columbia. The only thing Social Security does well is to ensure that seniors are as equally poor as possible.

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Depends on whether the differences are material to the conclusion. Drawing any inference from an analogy that cherry picks the similarities to infer a conclusion is a fallacy. I might entertain the analogy multilevel marketing is to pyramid scheme as social security is to ponzi scheme or Ponzi schemes are analogous to pyramid schemes because they are both fraudulent. But whether something is fraudulent hasn’t been proved, it’s a material difference that allows the analogy to be persuasively deceiving. I think you need to make the that argument forced participation or redistribution or insolvency is deceptive in order to support the analogy as a honest logical argument rather than a persuasion

Which fallacy would that be?

It's not a material difference, because the problematic element I'm referring to is unsustainability, not whether it's fraudulent or not.

It's like saying "well the police unjustifiably killing someone isnt murder because they have qualified immunity and murder means an unlawful killing", completely ignoring what informs what the definition of murder is.

It's just sophistry.

> Which fallacy would that be?

False analogy

> It's not a material difference, because the problematic element I'm referring to is unsustainability, not whether it's fraudulent or not.

Thats a reasonable argument on its own but that’s cherry picking one aspect and using the analogy to be lazy or worse persuasive. That’s assuming it was promised the tax or age would never change. It was designed from the beginning to benefit earlier generations. I think the forced participation argument is a better leg to stand on than sustainability for the analogy due to the debatable justification of government confiscation

> It's like saying "well the police unjustifiably killing someone isnt murder because they have qualified immunity and murder means an unlawful killing", completely ignoring what informs what the definition of murder is.

Qualified immunity is civil liability. But regarding the point of the analogy, I’m not asserting that something being legal or illegal is the only consideration. I’m more simply asserting using an analogy with something that is illegal is lazy or dishonest. Generally I find analogies lazy and more often dishonest on purpose. Especially in the area of law they are very tricky and mainly used when the law is unclear

Except it isn't a false analogy simply because it doesn't have all the qualities of a Ponzi scheme.

Thinking analogies are lazy is misunderstanding their purpose. Analogies are the very means of illustrating a concept by means of comparison.

Ponzi schemes are inherently unsustainable, but they're not inherently forced.

I can have objectives to it on forced participation grounds too, but I wouldn't call it a ponzi scheme to do so.

> Except it isn't a false analogy simply because it doesn't have all the qualities of a Ponzi scheme.

I agree

> Thinking analogies are lazy is misunderstanding their purpose. Analogies are the very means of illustrating a concept by means of comparison.

I find them lazy when used in debate bc they are usually used to over simplify differences .

> Ponzi schemes are inherently unsustainable, but they're not inherently forced.

I think whether social security is sustainable or not is the question that has to be agreed upon or else we are at an impass.

> I can have objectives to it on forced participation grounds too, but I wouldn't call it a ponzi scheme to do so.

I agree but that wasn’t my point. My point was if social security has questionable legality, it is less misleading to use an analogy to other illegal topics even if the reason they should be illegal is different

People arguing the police murder innocent civilians all the time. They are using the word murder by analogy.

The same goes for theft when tax dollars aren't used for what people want them to.

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Because they want to persuade people to believe the actions are illegal. So my question is are you making the argument that social security is illegal bc it is unsustainable? Because it is strongly implied by asserting the analogy to Ponzi scheme just like murder and theft

No they want to persuade people it's immoral because murder is.

I'm making the argument that SS is inherently flawed for the same reason Ponzi schemes are: they're structured in an unsustainable way.

That’s fair but ambiguous to me. how am I supposed to know if they are inferring immoral or illegal. But it begs the question, is it unsustainable by design. It was designed from the beginning for the tax rate to slowly increase over time as needed based on life expectancy and birth rates. The initial tax rate was only 1%. Birth rates were declining in the 1930s.

They're saying it's murder by analogy.

Murder is the immoral killing of someone, and are implying it should be illegal.

It was not designed for the tax rate to slowly increase over time.

> They're saying it's murder by analogy. Murder is the immoral killing of someone, and are implying it should be illegal.

I find that deceptive because not all killing of innocent people is murder. Depends on intent.

> It was not designed for the tax rate to slowly increase over time.

That could be inferred from its design. Tax rate has changed 20 times already to account for life expectancy and birth rate.

Is a person in Sweden guaranteed a certain income from it upon retirement, regardless of how much they paid in?

Calling SS a Ponzi scheme while calling for all of that money to instead be injected into the financial market to be managed by private bankers is just funny.

No, all killing of innocent people is murder.

There are degrees of murder, but involuntary manslaughter is both illegal and immoral.

To say it's inferred by design is to say it's designed to be flawed.

Given that isn't the case for any retirement plan, SS included, no.

"Regardless" was a bit too broad, sure. So how about "even if it is much much more than they paid in?"

> No, all killing of innocent people is murder.

Imprecise and ambiguous use of words

>There are degrees of murder, but involuntary manslaughter is both illegal and immoral.

Is manslaughter murder? It might depend on context.

> Homicide occurs when a person kills another person.[1] A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm

> Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought

> Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.[1]

> To say it's inferred by design is to say it's designed to be flawed.

Laws are subject to modification. Nobody would have assumed social security law as written in 1935 would not need to be updated as life expectancy and birth rates fluctuated. The 1935 law didn’t have any adjustment for inflation until COLA were added in 1975. I think that is going to be a fundamental disagreement between us which is fine. There is value in nailing down the exact and precise disagreement.

Every single time I read "hundreds of trillions of unfunded liabilities", it's always a sum of these liabilities over decades.

Sure, that's a lot of money and the number can also be true. However, that's weighted against quadrillions of government income.

It's always used as a big scary number to make it seem like we need to fuck with future generations because they don't matter since they don't vote.

>Sure, that's a lot of money and the number can also be true. However,that's weighted against quadrillions of government income.

No it isn't. It's *unfunded* liabilities. It's taking into account current government income trends. It's speaking to insolvent programs for people *who current exist* for which there is no funding to speak of in the future.

OK, say your income is one quadrillion dollars. Your liabilities are 900 trillion. You have 200 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Is it a scary number now?

You can't take into account current government income trends. We simply have no idea what the budget will be like in, say, 50 years. In addition, the number usually doesn't mention which programs and what levels they're currently funded or will be funded in the future and what is an actual liability. Case in point: Social Security is a liability - it's literally our money - but welfare is not because it's an optional social program.

Private bankers have a better track record for fiscal responsibility that congresscritters. I know that isn’t saying much but it is true.

The important thing is that the money be actually invested in something real and not just congress’s ability to tax future citizens.

It's ONLY gotten sooner, not later.

That's just a lie and minimizing the problem.

Nowhere was it ever 2025 you'll need to link something serious.

It STARTS at 75% the first year, then goes lower and lower. It's not as if it will just stay at that figure when you forecast out to 2050 for example.

Oh you can't predict it, but somehow you can assume the budget of the US government will be in the quadrillions?

Their predictions are impossible, but your handwaving is sufficient. Got it.

The assumption is current levels, and it is only liabilities, as in entitlements.

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