Social Security fund now seen to be empty by 2037

Social Security fund now seen to be empty by 2037

news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – Sick and getting sicker, Social Security will run at a deficit this year and keep on running in the red until its trust funds are drained by about 2037, congressional budget experts said Wednesday in bleaker-than-previous estimates.

The projected deficits add a sense of urgency to efforts to improve Social Security's finances. For much of the past 30 years, the program has run big surpluses, which the government has borrowed to spend on other programs. Now that Social Security is running deficits, the federal government will have to find money elsewhere to help pay for benef

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The Government has been borrowing from the Social Security fund as it has most always ran at a surplus of funds. Now that the economy has turned sour and the Social Security fund is about tapped out the Government wants to reform the system by raising retirement ages and cutting benefits.

What the Government needs to do is quit borrowing from the fund and find a way to pay back the retirees that have faithfully paid into the system for several decades throughout their working lives. What needs to be cut instead of retiree benefits is the politicians' and Government's access to what has become their personal piggybank. However, SCOTUS has determined no one has a legal right ro receive these funds.

The Supreme Court has established that no one has any legal right to Social Security benefits. The Court decided, in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), that "entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a contractual right". In that case, Ephram Nestor, a Bulgarian immigrant to the United States who made contributions for covered wages for the statutorily required "quarters of coverage" was nonetheless denied benefits after being deported in 1956 for being a member of the Communist party.

en.wikipedia.org...(United_States)


news.yahoo.com
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Well, at least I will get to have some of the money LOL... I will be 75

They are crooks.

hahaha this is only taking into effect the inflation TODAY, not then. the reality is that it can run out in five years if the circumstances permit. not too reliable in the long run. people suck at adding the human factor

BE WISE - Invest in the 3 Gs

GUNS
GOLD
and GRAINS.

Social Security is a bad idea with good intentions. I say get rid of all entitlement programs except necessary benefits like short term unemployment, and maybe food stamps. A lot of today's problems are engineered anyway.

Corporate mismanagement and bankruptcy has led to loss of employees' retirement funds. In February of 2005 US President GW Bush made Social Security reform a prominent theme in his State of the Union Address oulining a plan for privatization. Critics immediately responded that such a plan would worsen any solvency problems in the fund. A few short years later plunging stocks values showed that concern to be a reality as individual investments and private retirement accounts recorded record losses.

Excess Social Security funds are currently placed in secure trusts backed by faith in the US Government yet end up funding excess government spending:

en.wikipedia.org...(United_States)

Social Security taxes are paid into the Social Security Trust Fund maintained by the U.S. Treasury (technically, the "Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund", as established by 42 U.S.C. § 401(a)). Current year expenses are paid from current Social Security tax revenues. When revenues exceed expenditures, as they have in most years, the excess is invested in special series, non-marketable U.S. Government bonds, thus the Social Security Trust Fund indirectly finances the federal government's general purpose deficit spending. In 2007, the cumulative excess of Social Security taxes and interest received over benefits paid out stood at $2.2 trillion.[80] The Trust Fund is regarded by some as an accounting trick which holds no economic significance. Others argue that it has specific legal significance because the Treasury securities it holds are backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government, which has an obligation to repay its debt.

(bold emphasis added)

Workers pay into to Social Security system throughout their working lives along with matching funds paid into it by their employers but the Supreme Court has established that no one has any legal right to Social Security benefits. It appears, when you get right down to the basics, it could all vanish into thin air without so much as an apology due you. In the end it is all backed by faith and a non-binding promise, nothing more.

Sorry guys, but the Ponzi scheme known as social security is broke now.

The CBO’s revenue/expenditure estimates now place the program in permanent deficit. There had been some hope that payroll taxes would recover sufficiently post-recession to put the program back into the black (the theoretical black) for at least a few more years, putting off the day of reckoning for an election cycle or more. No more: The new CBO estimates put Social Security in the red for as far as the eye can see.

But there’s a bit of camouflage attached: If you include the “interest” that the federal government “owes” the fictitious Social Security “trust fund,” then the program is in the black. Which is to say, if you think that borrowing another $1 trillion from the bond market to shift money from one government account to another government account makes the nation $1 trillion richer, then everything’s hunky-dory.

Now, if you don’t understand how the government has been playing a shell game with social security funds for decades now, what’s happened is this: Social Security had a trust fund into which excess revenues from payroll taxes were placed. Unfortunately, the federal government has been borrowing from that fund to finance other spending. To borrow, the Treasury Department issues a bond to the Social Security Trust Fund promising to pay back the borrowed money with interest. For a long time, just as in the classic Ponzi Scheme, Social Security had more new suckers paying in than what it was paying out in benefits. Thus there was no need to dip into the trust fund. Indeed, it meant there was more in the trust fund for the federal government to spend elsewhere. But now, again like what happens at the end of a Ponzi Scheme, there are not enough new suckers meaning that those revenue surpluses are gone. In order to continue paying benefits Social Security must use its trust fund. But now the trust fund is gone, meaning that we have no choice but to borrow money to continue paying people on this entitlement program.

Social Security is a Pyramid scheme and it's sad that Politicians on both side of the aisle lie to the American people every time they talk about this issue. S.S. depends on workers at the bottom of the Pyramid to pay out benefits to those at the top of the pyramid.

The reason the system is in deep trouble is because the Government spends the money and replaces it with I.O.U.'s and this is why the increase in life expectancy of baby boomers will hurt S.S. and Medicare.

People are living longer and collecting benefits longer and the Pyramid is turning into a diamond because there isn't enough workers at the bottom of the pyramid to pay out benefits at the top of the pyramid.

Obamacare is designed to try to force people into a broken system through a mandate and also ration out healthcare. They will basically tell the elderly to kick the bucket and stop living so long because you're hurting Medicare and S.S.