reply to post by Indigo5
By your own admission SS is NOT CONTRIBUTING to the DEFICET NOW!! You are now arguing about the future.
Again - this is like saying your health insurance through your employer is not contributing to your bills.
Total outlays exceed total revenues.
A long way off from your initial position that it was the largest expense in the budget...glad that you now understand it is a "FUNDED
EXPENSE".
No, it really isn't. The Federal Government is still liable for the outlays regardless of the revenues. The special tax enacted to fund the system
is currently generating revenues that exceed the outlays for that program - but that does not change what is.
Claiming it is a deficet driver ..RIGHT NOW... is like a friend giving you money to buy a case a of beer, you go and buy the case of beer and
deliver it to him, and then you complain about the money you spent??? Claiming it adds to your debt???
A horribly lacking analogy. The Federal Government sells the securities from the SS fund to support other programs. It is, effectively, just another
income tax with different dynamics as any revenues are ultimately part of the general fund.
Likewise, the expense is shared whether the tax is appropriate or not.
All government spending must be compensated by taxation. That taxation comes at the expense of the citizens. Any and all outlays (expenses), thus,
contribute to the deficit. If we were not paying social security taxes, we could pay higher sales or income taxes without changing total revenues -
which would go toward different things - or toward shrinking the deficit.
Ending Social Security is an easy way for the Government to not have to honor it's debts.
And, here, we've come full circle.
You were arguing that Social Security was funded... and are now arguing that it is a financial liability to the government - which must be paid by
active workers.
It's a flawed concept - the idea that I am getting "my money" is simply not accurate. My social security dollars are going to retired individuals.
"My social security dollars" would come from my children and grandchildren as they work. The system was -never- intended to operate long-term, and
will never practically function as a 'fund.' It requires continued taxation to work
www.forbes.com...
Social Security status-quo defenders have assured us for the past 25 years that Social Security is fully funded—for the next 25 years, or 2036.
So if there are real assets in the Social Security Trust Fund—$2.6 trillion allegedly—then how could failure to reach a debt-ceiling agreement
possibly threaten seniors’ Social Security checks?
The answer is that the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it, exactly as Krauthammer asserted. And the only way
the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the
money—which, of course, it can’t do because of the debt ceiling.
And here’s the real irony: Anytime someone has proposed personal Social Security retirement accounts as a way to ensure that people have real
assets in their own account without bankrupting the government or future generations, defenders of the status quo would pounce, calling such a reform,
in Al Gore’s words, a “risky scheme.” They have vociferously claimed that those trust fund assets are real and that only by having the
government manage and control the accounts would seniors be guaranteed to get their retirement checks.
Yes, the accounts likely would have declined when the stock market went down, though not if the reform were structured like three Texas counties
did 30 years ago (see here). But in case you haven’t noticed, Social Security revenues also declined during the economic downturn—because fewer
people were working—so that the government is paying out more in benefits than it is taking in, and hence needing additional federal revenues, a
fact admitted by Lew.
So... "Yeah... but, not really."
Of course - this is completely ignoring the 732 billion dollars in Medicare/Medicaid spending and 496 billion in "Income Security Nets."
it's NOT the people ok ?? bizzss ).
