Social security is not socialism but it needs to be privatized

Are you ready? Got yer ears on this time?

When current revenue is insufficient to meet current obligations, the SSA notifies the Treasury of the need to redeem Trust Fund securities, and the Treasury sells a matching value of T-bills on the open market. The proceeds received by the Treasury from the sale are given to the SSA who the retires a matching value of Trust Fund securities in exchange.

In this way the national debt remains unchanged and the debt is moved out of the Trust Fund and into the public domain.

Feel free to ask anything.

 

The term "IOU" is used by republicans to cheapen and disparage a perfectly sound system they don't like. They would rather have the money go to Wall Street.

 

Got ya. Pretty arcane. For simplicity sake even the Social Security Admin refers to ti as going into and out of the general fund

So where did the funds go that bought the Trust Fund Treasuries in the first place? They paid off T Bills?

 

What? Were you banking on Bernie Sanders winning or something?

 

People use vague "code" language when they don't know what they're talking about and want to leave themselves an escape hatch. Write plainly and clearly if you want a reply. I don't play guessing games.

 

The payroll cash goes to the SSA and they pay current obligations out of that money. If there is an excess the money, by law, must be invested in special Treasury securities and those securities are kept in the Trust Fund. (This is what the right calls "IOUs".) All $2.8 trillion in Treasuries held by the Trust Fund are paid for in full. They are bought from the Treasury. The treasury provides or sells the securities to the Trust Fund in exchange for the cash, which the Treasury deposits in the general fund.

 

Actually that's not as bad idea. When the SSA needs to purchase Treasuries for the TF and buy them from the Treasury in exchange for the security, the Treasury could use the money to pay off T-bills if it wanted to. Rather than keeping the national debt stable for the moment, that would actually reduce the debt by that much. But that is up to the Treasury, not the SSA.

 

It's pretty clear you will get out of it whatever you want to.

- - - Updated - - -

Confirmation of my assumption.

 

When a private citizen concocts a plan where all of the assets are depleted and entirely dependent on new money coming in to replace the old investments, they generally go into a system. A prison system.
No, it is not an easy anything. Even if someone came up with some brilliant plan, the transition would be horrific and inevitably many people get screwed. Then there is the dilemma about what consequences would occur if people opted out and then were beggars on the streets at retirement age. I get "free will and free choice" but the fact remains about 40% of Americans are mental midgets. All one needs to verify this is watching interviews "on the streets" and hearing the crazy answers to simple questions. It's even crazier than the popular collage of photographs of "The People of Walmart".

 

And you think such interviews just show you every interview without selecting just the ones that make the point that is wanted?

You talk about "mental midgets" but then you believe these interviews objectively represent the public. So who really is the mental midget?

 

You really need to get out more. All that is needed is reading online article comments. And these people have internet access and smartphones or computers............it's a lot worse than you believe.

 

I agree with your first paragraph and Madoff went to prison for doing what was in essence a carbon copy of SS. He spent the money people gave him to invest and used new money coming in to make payments to earlier investors.
I disagree that a transition to a voluntary privatized SS system would be that difficult though. All that you'd need to do is have a number of extremely safe annuity companies to chose from that met very rigid standards. You could opt to put some or all of your mandatory contribution to SS in one or more of these companies and the rest in the government fund if you chose to do so. This would have no effect on the present SS system except to reduce its obligations by an amount equal to the reduced contributions and in reality would makes SS less in the red than it is now. This would mean the increased taxes on the rich by removing the cap or whatever tax is increased to prop up this failing system would at least be reduced. Over time as people saw how much better there money was doing in the private funds SS would gradually shrivel and die a natural death. This would likely take a couple of generations and would be a smoothe and voluntary transition. It's just not that complicated really.

 

Typical liberal, using other people's money to buy votes from the less fortunate and taking offense that anyone has the nerve to disagree with the practice.

 

He left out that in our spare time we push old lady's in wheel chairs off cliffs. Greatest sport since dwarf tossing!

 

In theory, yes. In practice? I dunno. Savvy younger people will opt out of the traditional system. And because it's a Ponzi scheme, the traditional system will likely crash and burn. Then we will be faced with yet another bailout.
Perhaps that is smart though. Bite the bullet now because the longer they wait to fix it the worse the hit will be. Simply jacking up the maximum amount subject to contributions isn't the fair or equitable way to fix this thing, that is just another redistribution of wealth scam since benefits are capped.

- - - Updated - - -

And cow tipping. I have a thing for Dairys.

 

When you steal their retirement you metaphorically do just that

 

Shhh! We need to keep this secret, lest everyone want to play!

 

More fake news. It never ends. The US government won't let that happen, but it will exact a price and it will be a very ugly figure. It will make the banking bailout look like chump change.

 

Ok, so you confess to being gullible. Got it.

- - - Updated - - -

That's an illogical leap to an unrelated personal attack.

- - - Updated - - -

"Old lady's" what? Their purse? Their cat? What?

 

The truth is not a personal attack.

 

Let us know when you find some truth

 

The really hard part is the politics involved. Congress would have to do this and they would be immediately accused of trying to take SS away from the next generations as a couple of demagogue types in here are doing and most politicians scare easy so it would take some real pushing to motivate them. SS is running out of money and I believe what will happen at the last minute is they will raise or even remove the cap and turn SS into welfare for the old. It's the politicly easy thing to do because the rich are a minority and as the country ( snowflakes) becomes more socialist it's easy to go after them. If we could acknowledge that reality and go ahead and do it while simultaneously offering a private option I believe society could be weaned off the government tit over time and their would be a painless and even profitable transition. The sad reality though is both sides of the isle love this SS slush fund they have raided for years and it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon. I'm too old to really care but if I were in the younger generation I'd fight like Hell to get rid of this model T antiquated system. Not all young people are snowflakes but unfortunately they may be outnumbered by the no balls bunch, time will tell.