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Fix Social Security for $50?


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Fix Social Security for $50?

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Big Mike's Avatar
 Big Mike 
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Source: How to Fix the Social Security Solvency Crisis for Just $49.99 - Forbes


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As you know, Social Security is a big government program. And as government programs go, it’s a pretty simple one. The government collects a lot of taxes. It sends a lot of checks to Social Security recipients. Less than 2 percent of Social Security’s budget is spent on administration, most of which goes toward producing the list of most popular baby names.

But unlike most government programs, Social Security has an interesting accounting quirk. You may have heard of something called the “Social Security Trust Fund.” Here’s how it works.

There’s a staff of people at the Bureau of the Public Debt whose job is to note down how much was collected in OASDI taxes (the largest chunk of payroll tax) and how much was paid out in Social Security benefits. They take that difference and they write it on a slip of paper. Then, they put it with all the slips from previous years, which are stored in a Very Important File Drawer somewhere in West Virginia.

Lately, the government has been sending out more in benefits than it has collected in OASDI taxes. This means that the Bureau of the Public Debt employees have had to write negative numbers on the slips, which makes them sad. They’re sad because, eventually, the sum total of the figures on all the slips of paper will be negative, which will cause your grandmother to starve to death.

Today, the Social Security Administration announced that they think that will happen in 2033, not 2035, so it is probably time to get granny’s affairs in order.

That’s unless we implement my fix that nobody else has thought of before. We’ll buy a really nice pen (that’s what costs $49.99), have one of those federal workers write “44 quadrillion dollars” on it, and put it in the drawer. By my calculations, this will keep Social Security solvent through 3575, plus granny will get a free lifetime supply of Werther’s Original. Entitlement crisis solved!

Or, we could just admit that the Trust Fund balance is arbitrary and bears no meaningful relationship to the government’s ability to pay Social Security benefits. For a less sarcastic case that we should all just ignore trust fund accounting, see here.

Mike

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  #2 (permalink)
 
mxphytlx's Avatar
 mxphytlx 
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originally social security collected from all working folks went into a fund only for social security.it was going fine til during lbj administration they took ss and put it into the general fund.where all the politicians could borrow from ss for their own agendas.i wonder how well ss would be doing today if it was left in the ss fund only for ss.

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The Boomers are retiring. They are a larger group than the new group entering the workforce. Younger workers will have to make up the difference by paying more, paying longer, retiring later for less benefits. It's only a matter of time before they wise up and start hunting down old timers and" removing them" from the payout list.

Personally, I'm not worried...I've been watching the Hunger games to learn how to deal with them...

I'm just a simple man trading a simple plan.

My daddy always said, "Every day above ground is a good day!"
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Last Updated on April 26, 2012


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